*visitor

The bats amplify my call, and the vampires come back to Oblivion; having the customers around with the girl seemed risky. Even I had a hard time taming the thirst, especially since it's been a while I have sunk my teeth into living flesh.

My shift ends with a session on a stressed-out 16-year-old second, who has no clue how to feed herself without killing. Nothing is worse than being in a city piling under cold cases due to Second's inexperience; it's a silent call for the Hawks to intervene.

As a lord, I must avoid any conflict that can put peace in peril.

Since she's too young for any other solution, I give her a pouch of O negative blood. It suits everyone as it does in transfusions. Drinking pouch blood is beyond me. The new generation of Strigoi does not perceive the difference as most have never bitten, but for First and Seconds of the Kalmarunionen era, this fluid has the same consistency as skimmed milk. It is without warmth, and though we can keep it for ten years when frozen, after forty-two days, we drinkers notice alterations. Anyway, the pouch does the job. The kid pokes it with a straw as though it's a Capri Sun and starts drinking.

Everything is legal; we obtain the fluid through the foundation I created in 1948. Technically, the system should allow my kind to feed without exploiting the food chain, if I may say.

Strigoi have no land and no public recognition as a nation, building society when a diaspora is not a trivial matter, as some civilizations past or present who lived our current position will attest. Yet I must try as a spokesman of my species; this planet is the heritage Tanwen left the humans whether we like it or not. Now there is a form of homogeneity in our behaviors governed by law. We punish and educate our own.

The achievement might not seem glorious, but one must recall we used to bite and kill in the darkness of alleys, sleep in graveyards, and create Repugnants like Mattel produces dolls.

Now everyone has left the parlor; my mind focuses on what preoccupied me during the last six hours.

"Mephisto."

"Here, Boss."

Mephisto hands me a file; I smile; his skills never cease to amaze me. The boy always anticipates my requests. One could think he reads me. Here I have all the information he found on Ophelia's lookalike and friend.

The woman's scent alone deserves a nickname; my mind hesitates between a Korean Wisteria and a Chocolate Cosmos.

It will be Chocolate Cosmos, with its reddish and brown color and vanilla scent. This flower, which blooms at night, fits in perfectly.

Aurora Davis caught my attention; first, the woman's features do not leave me indifferent. My fetish for redheads remains unchanged. They enslave me so swiftly, but Aurora is hollow and a knot of frustration. A First could nourish himself for a decade with the depression she has locked. Aurora is wealthy; unlike her unfortunate ancestor, she works in a museum.

Concerning Inna Lee Rodgers, nothing in the file indicates how the woman's hemoglobin can have such an exquisite scent or why she wears a protective charm. The person who gave her the pendant must know the effect she has on my kind. None of the archives I have read during centuries relate any fact or legend about blood like hers.

Her mother is an anthropologist turned florist, and her father, a teacher. One of them could have found and given her the talisman; yet again, it would mean these humans are aware of her particularity.

The scent escaped from a small cut on her finger; though dry and scabbed, the wound distracted me while I roamed in Aurora's mind. Whiffs of her fragrance made me redouble efforts to extract the emotions as I tattooed.

A resident of Crimson for a year, I cannot see how the girl dodged my or the bat's vigilance. How could she survive this long without becoming someone's reserve?

"Mephisto, did you notice anything about those two women?"

"La Ghirlanda is a bitch; you heard what she said about her best friend in front of her."

I omit to tell Mephisto what I saw inside; Aurora is shallow, desperate for love. Despair makes her easy prey, a few sweet words, and she falls into your arms or bed, see both.

From the high school football team to strangers at parties, Aurora played raw meat, grilled back to front feeding the unworthy who indulged themselves without restraint nor an ounce of pity. This void and need to prove she possesses the deity's gift from whom she inherited her name is what pushed Aurora to betray Chocolate Cosmos.

The hollow goals filling Aurora's life make her despise her existence daily. Bulimic with an anorexic tendency suffering from anxiety, she is walking pathos. The tattoos will relieve her, but Aurora will eventually be back here to have me purge her again.

Though I say this, I cannot shrug off Ophelia's doppelgänger. Worry takes over, lifelines of reincarnation are often tied. These ties travel through time in cells. The pattern can leap generations, but at one point, a perfect copy appears; sometimes, they possess similar traits. If Aurora has even an ounce of Ophelia's character, then I must stay close and refrain myself from making her a Second.

Mental pathologies follow the dead in their awakening. Immortal, psychical diseases decline, while mental illnesses magnify. No longer mortal, one's inhibition ceases, and decadence becomes a guru. I wish not to witness what 21st century Ophelia has in store. Aurora already has my mark, which she accepted willingly; I can go to her without asking for an invitation.

"Can I leave, boss?"

"Yes, thank you, Mephisto."

Alone, I sit at my desk, lean back on my chair, and close my eyes. My body releases the pressure, what comes out of me, and crosses the city is an echo. Yes, I kill a myth, but no, I do not fly and appear in the dark by a lady's bedside with my fangs hanging out to dry like a Strigoi beggar. Also, I prefer to avoid having people wondering whether it's a bird, an obese bat, or a plane passing as I, like an idiot, interpret Swan Lake in the air. There is a method, but it is unnecessary for my current intent.

Through the bat's eyes, I advance. Once at Aurora's window, I seek to possess a smaller entity that can grant me entry. My course ends in multiple pupils of a spider in Aurora's room. Thank goodness she has a cat, for I am not fond of observing through Araneae's bundle of eyes, which makes me dizzy.

The cat settles on Aurora's bed. From there, I penetrate her mind. As imagined, I am already present. The last sharp images of the day are usually what the psyche retains. And so I portray a plumber; the vintage porn scenario is grotesque. I switch her middle-aged housewife reverie into something more enticing.