Telling was not easy for Ferid. He had never done it before. He had never gone so far as to want to share part of his life with someone else, perhaps because he had never thought that anyone would ever be interested in his existence, especially after his experience with Saito, the vampire who had condemned him to immortality.

The day he had entered his life, it had taken an unexpected turn, leading him to obtain the immortality that so many human beings longed to possess. All too soon, however, the golden glow of this new life had disappeared, fading to nothing.

Saito was a very strong vampire, but more importantly, skilled in the art of oratory and manipulation.

"Kind of like me!" Ferid commented with a certain note of regret.

He said he had seen something in him that could be useful for his plans, for Saito he was little more than a pawn to be exploited within that great chessboard on which his plan was taking shape. What was it? A sort of revenge against the one who had generated him, the so-called firstborn vampire, the strongest being of all.

That was enough to generate just the right amount of adrenaline in the fresh vampire Ferid's body. But there were also other aspects that soon came to the surface. He had become a vampire, a monster who needed human blood in order to survive, a monster who lived at the expense of other people's lives.

Of course, he had never been a person too prone to sentimentality and love of others, but still... Yet having a guilty conscience also carries a burden, and no matter how small, it was still a burden. Moreover, in the early stages after the transformation, human feelings play a very important role in a vampire's psyche, still managing to exert some kind of pressure.

After that, things slowly start to change. Human feelings fade away to make way for indifference. While one may initially feel remorse for a human being, as time goes by the monstrous predatory nature prevails, but not only that. One begins to come to terms with boredom. A spasmodic quest to overcome this boredom begins. A condition that one has not chosen, but that has been imposed. Also the condition of a monster to which no kind of salvation can be granted.

That is what he had become. A cursed being that no God could redeem, no forgiveness awaiting a vampire. All chances of salvation had vanished the moment he had accepted this pact with the devil for eternal life. And if not even God could help him, then how could he hope that a human being would show him any compassion? It would never happen, it couldn't happen.

A vampire was seen as a monster without the slightest scruple, without feelings, a creature whose heart had stopped beating, whose warmth had been extinguished forever. Ferid had soon realised the curse to which he had been condemned.

For what reason? What had he done to deserve this? He still had no real answer to this question. The only thing he had learned was that love and friendship would be forever barred to him. Perhaps that was also what led to that slow change in a vampire's psyche, the knowledge that he could only provoke fear and anguish in another led him to act accordingly. Did others see him as a monster? Then he would act according to their expectations. In this way one ended up becoming a monster. One no longer gave importance to human feelings.

People acted according to their instincts, and over time their emotions faded, to the point where killing someone did not lead to any conflict of conscience. A human being was seen solely as a succulent piece of meat with which to feed, nothing more and nothing less. This hardening of emotions seemed almost a natural course. Yet there seemed to be no real logic behind it. Soon he had begun to wonder why he had been transformed.

Because at first there seemed to be a common thread behind the manoeuvres of that vampire father Saito. Too bad that one day he had disappeared out of the blue without giving any explanation to the other.

It was at this moment that he felt the bitter taste of betrayal for the first time, when it still seemed that his human emotions persisted under the icy armour. At that moment he had begun to work out his own twisted plan against what he could regard as a kind of father. Towards the vampire who had forced him into that life.

His goal became to find him and eliminate him. To what end he could have asked the girl, but Ferid continued surprisingly, that was one way to give meaning to his interminable existence. He knew that finding Saito to eliminate him would take time, effort and energy. Especially when he realised that he needed an effective plan that could lead to victory. His newfound vampire intelligence only helped him to devise an increasingly convoluted and complex plan. So along the way he had come across the possibility of resurrection for humans.

To be honest, he had little interest in bringing anyone back to life, as he was past the stage of remorse and guilt, but he found the discovery very interesting and above all useful. He knew how attached humans could become to each other, he knew that many of them would be willing to do anything to see a loved one alive again. These considerations were no small matter.

He needed all the resources he could get to win his personal war. So it was for the vile purpose of exploiting the people he had created and perfected his containment and preservation laboratories over the centuries. Did he regret what he had done? No, he did not feel the slightest remorse. He could almost be said to be saving them.

Yurika struggled to look Ferid in the eye as he told her what had happened. Sometimes he looked so cold and deadly that she was in awe. She also sensed the sense of desperation that must have driven him to act in such a way. He claimed to have lost the ability to take into account those feelings that characterised the human psyche, yet the girl could not help thinking that it was also because of them that the vampire had started to move in a certain way and to push himself towards a certain goal.

She shuddered to think that the main cause of all this stemmed from the behaviour that this certain Saito had had towards her vampire. He had behaved like a father abandoning his child. It had taken her breath away, almost preventing her from speaking. She knew too well what that meant.

Ferid's tale was not yet finished; he still had much to share with her. His past as a vampire had been characterised by death and destruction, he couldn't deny that, but in doing so, he had managed to analyse and record the worst fears of human beings to the point of almost enjoying the evil he did.

Why this? Because it led him to play a dominant role in the lives of others, leaving an indelible trace of hatred and fear. His victims would never forget him. Never. That's how that quest for a love match had distorted into a search for feelings that were not so noble. After all, if it was only what he could get from others, then the only thing left for him to do was to accept it and use it to his advantage.

Fear and hatred were very strong feelings, perhaps more so than love could be. They were feelings that could easily be exploited. For him, being a vampire, the game was even easier. Over the years, despair had become his favourite pastime, driving humans to despair was one of the few things that could make him feel alive.

Too bad that for a vampire, the absolute worst enemy was boredom. Immortality was starting to get to him at some point. Even the certainty of being able to hear the cries of despair that begged him to spare them became almost boring. But the satisfaction of having caused them remained constant. He would have liked to play a more important role in the enigmatic Saito's life as well, but apparently that vampire's plans must have changed over the centuries.

Ferid's plans had also taken a different form with the passage of time. Creating scenarios of death and destruction remained a kind of front image that could help him keep up his status as a vampire, but above all he had tried to bring out the worst in himself and his skill in the art of manipulating people in such a way as to ward off prying visitors.

Had he made enemies along the way? Probably so, and often powerful ones at that. Among these he could certainly mention the queen of vampires in Japan, Krul Tepes. It could hardly be said that the two were on good terms, far from it. Yet he had managed to secure his confidence. He always reached the limit of a creature's exasperation and then unleashed his hidden weapons, the means by which he could make almost anyone bend to his will.

This is where his workshop of bodies came in. They were of vital importance in the economy of his final plan. Through those bodies and the exploitation of the strongest human passions it was easy to convince someone to follow his will. He never did it explicitly, but most of the time he managed to give the impression that he was not the puppet master of the situation. At the end of the day, he was perfectly aware that he wasn't the strongest vampire around, but with a commitment developed over his very long life, he could safely claim to have a sharp mind, perhaps one of the best in the vampire scene. He knew he was only a seventh progenitor, which is why he sensed he would need outside help to complete his work.

Saito was a second progenitor, this made him extremely stronger than him, but also significantly stronger than the vampire queen. He had always known that he could rely on human potential to achieve his ends. In the years since the Apocalypse they had succeeded in the incredible feat of creating weapons with which they could confront and kill vampires, however high ranking ones still remained out of reach for them. They had been able to give up part of their humanity, to come to terms with demonic creatures in order to achieve their goals. All in all, it could not be said that there was that much difference between humans and vampires.

He laughed at this point. Yes, their motives were completely different, but the substance didn't change. Even humans were reduced to doing the worst things. That could only be an advantage for the vampire. Moreover, it had to be said that the experiments on humans had started way back in time, but that was not a subject he would deal with now. It was him personally he was talking about. For it was he who had partly caused the Apocalypse, he who had persuaded a human to commit the worst of sins, precisely with the help of corpses.

He sighed at this point. He knew perfectly well that this whole thing only made him even more monstrous in the eyes of the girl. He admitted that he had been wrong not to bring all this up earlier, but initially he did not think it was the case. It was only when his stony heart had slowly rediscovered the warmth of love that this possibility had actually appeared in his mind.

Fear had also emerged, fear that she might not accept this.

"The fear that you might actually open your eyes and see me as the monster that I am Yurika. Because I found out that a negative judgement from you could hurt me... I would feel abandoned like so many centuries ago. I'll be honest, I can't tell you that I regret what I did in the past, I can't say that I'm no longer attracted to death, destruction and despair in human beings. I will not deny it. I cannot deny my nature. Just as I can't tell you that I will make those bodies disappear, they are part and parcel of a centuries-old plan. The only thing I can tell you is that someone else has started to occupy a special place in my life, I can't promise you that I'll become a saint overnight, but I can promise you that I'll try to put a stop to my vampire nature, that I'll try to let you warm me with your love if you're still willing to give it to me. Tell me, Yurika. After all I've told you, would you reconfirm the words you spoke to me that night?"

18/05/2021