Diary of a Bloodsucker

November 2nd, 1813

Vienna,mierda! I'm still in Vienna.

Diary, I had hoped to be back in Almeria by this time. Back home, for the holiday, for the Day of the Dead. (There is no Day of theUn-dead, so I settle for the closest thing.) During the chaos of those revels, that last well into the early morning, victims are easy to come by. A woman or two disappears and no one notices. No one suspects my hand...

But, I am trapped here in Vienna in this wine cellar, hiding like vermin, and I have been here for the last three nights. The boredom has become intolerable, Diary, so I risked lighting a candle (the sun has been down for hours) and I am making this entry. (Will it be my last?)

Von Gelding is hounding me. He picked up my trail somewhere on the road from Graz. I didn't even know it until after I arrived here, and he surprised me in the hotel with the Russian ambassador's daughter. We were both (myself and von Gelding) lucky to get out of that room alive. His men didn't fare so well. I tore two of their hearts out (my preferred method, since there's no chance of them returning as one of our kind) but I was forced to bite through the third's throat. (I still have a piece of esophagus stuck between my first and second bicuspid.) But I'm certain his remains were destroyed in the fire.

Von Gelding never tells his men how fast, how strong, or how ferocious we are, when he engages their services. If he did, they'd think twice about joining the cause, about becoming his fodder. He has an uncanny talent for bringing just the right amount of men with him. Just enough to keepme occupied, andhimselfsafe... in the doorway, or out in the hall, cowering.

I would have had him this time, if he didn't hide behind Ilyana. Poor, beautiful, Ilyana. He needn't have killed her. I wasn't using her to feed on. She wouldn't have gone through the change. I'm sure he realized that, when he drove the stake through her heart and she bled instead of burned. He is ruthless and relentless and fanatical... And he has the resources to hunt me incessantly (being an agent of Bonaparte's) and the knowledge to destroy me utterly (being trained by the Jesuits in matters of the arcane.) He brings the wrath of both Napolean and the pope down on my poor, vampiric head. Perhaps, I deserve it.

Von Gelding is the most formidable foe I ever have faced, since Fray Torquemada turned me into a vampire, by biting my neck (kindly sparing it from the garrote) nearly three and a half centuries ago. Now there's a humiliation the Catholic church has never lived down. Pope Julius III must have awoken one fine day in 1528, and realized that the grandest of his grand inquisitors was almost one hundred and thirty years old. So he sent a Jesuit to destroy the Franciscan, then altered dates on documents, burying all evidence that the man was no longer a man, and hadn't been for over a century. But he didn't bury Torquemada. No, his remains were burned. Like those of so many of the Inquisition's victims. I would have labeled that "ironic", if I was still human.

I sometimes wonder, if I was persecuted more then for being a heretic, or more now, for being a vampire. It is said he lives in an age of enlightenment, but man still fears the darkness. It is my soul's fate to be persecuted, I suppose. Or my body's, since my soul no longer exists. (If it ever did.) Why did Torquemada choose to spare me from death? Was he "sparing" me at all? Or did he think thatun-death was the greater punishment for one of my ilk? He certainly was impassioned when he bit me, enflamed. I can still feel his hot breath on my neck, smell the stench of his arousal. (Do I smell like that when I'm aroused?) I'm sure he was as insatiable then, as I am now. Eternal desire housed in a mortal body, a dead body, unable to feel, unable to find release, yet driven by a compulsive spirit to seek it out, always, everywhere, forever. This is the true curse of the vampire, continually desirous of both flesh and blood (female flesh and blood in my case, male in Torquemada's) but never satisfied by either. We act, we perform, we function, but without satisfaction. Not that I didn't find satisfaction often enough (too often?) when I was alive. At least I have the vivid memory of what satisfaction felt like. Vivid enough to last an eternity. If I last an eternity.

Should von Gelding finds me here in this dank cellar-- But how could he? I'm hiding in the place he least expects me to be, where he would last look. But, should he find me, were he to destroy me, if this is to be my last communication with the world of man, I must tell them things you already know, Diary.

I am Count Mesmeroso, also known as Fray Mesmeroso. (I was placed in a seminary by my father at the age of 13. He died shortly thereafter, so I was Count first, then Fray.) I was born in 1462 in Almeria, in southern Spain, in the province of Andalucia. In fact I still call it home. Castle Mesmoroso still stands there now in 1813. I reside there and am thought to be my own great, great, great (I don't recall how many greats) grandnephew by the villagers. There is talk among them yet of the legend of Fray Mesmeroso, the corrupt Franciscan, the heretic who continually broke his vow of chastity with the women of Almeria, (13 was too young to be placed in a seminary!) threatening them with damnation if they spoke of the liaisons, calling them God's will (some of them believed that it was) until he was arrested by the Inquisition, tortured and presumably killed. (I was tortured, but as previously described, I was not killed.)

The desires I had for women when I was mortal, became even stronger after my rebirth. And the women, "ironically" are now easier to attain. I no longer need speak to them of heavenly designs. I no longer need speak to them at all. Because I can control their minds, completely. They are compelled to obey my every whim.... Where this power comes from I can't say. Perhaps, it is animal magnetism, stemming from the obliteration of my soul. Perhaps, the explanation is supernatural, rather than natural. Suffice it to say it exists. With a wave of a hand, a cock of the head, a focusing of the eye, or sometimes merely a thought, I can get them to do whatever I want. Anything. No matter how depraved, no matter how bestial... Again, let me remind you of the "irony" of my existence. I can never again know satisfaction, but I can have whoever I want...

So who do I want tonight, as I hide here in the wine cellar of my greatest enemy? As I hide underneath von Gelding's very house, as he scours the countryside in search of my walking carcass? Who I want... and who I shall surely have... is his daughter, Greta... who sleeps unsuspectingly in her room, in the house above me.

I must summon her now Diary. I will apprise you of my conquest in the next entry. If there is a next entry...

November 14th, 1813

I am safe within the confines of castle Mesmeroso, back in my beloved Almeria. Von Gelding is dead, his manor destroyed and his daughter ravaged. I will start with the last event, as it foments the other two.

Not daring to leave the cellar, I concentrated on Greta von Gelding. I had seen her through the window the night I'd arrived. Her beauty was a beacon drawing me to the dimly lit room. Despite the danger, I had to stop to admire her. The three days between that fateful moment and my finally having her, seemed like an eternity even to me. How could she have become so beautiful in just nineteen years? I hovered at the window, staring. She was kneeling beside her bed, saying her prayers. The long tresses of her golden hair fell innocently (or was it wantonly?) about her bare shoulders. The moonlight from the yard, brighter than the candlelight inside, poured through the window, rendering her nightclothes veritably transparent. Her lithe form, haloed by the diaphanous gown, pressing against its flimsy satin, begged to be set free. It was in that gown that she appeared to me in the cellar.

Merely by concentrating on her image, by envisioning her leaving her bed, walking down the main staircase into the drawing room, passing through it to the back of the kitchen, opening the door to the wine cellar, and walking down its rotting staircase --merely by envisioning it!-- I was able to make her do it. What else would I be able to make her do?I pondered that thought, as I drank in her loveliness. She stood there, oblivious to her surroundings, oblivious to my presence, gazing straight ahead at nothing. Slightly winded from her descent, she caught her breath, her breasts heaving gently against the nightie. I could no longer resist her. I began caressing her through the gown, worshipping the contours of her body with my hands. She was alternately firm, then soft (from the bones of her shoulders to the suppleness of her breasts) strong (the arch of her back), then yielding (her buttocks), smooth (the flat of her stomach), then moist (between her legs). I accommodated her body's desire to be free, by tearing the gown off her. Her nipples became hard with gratitude, and the goose bumps rising on her skin, sang their silent chorus of appreciation.

I stood in front of her lost in her beauty. Absently, I waved my hand in front of her face, as I had done so many times before to so many others. Silently, obediently, she knelt in the dirt in front of me and began rubbing my cock through my codpiece. At first gently stroking it through the material with the palm of her hand, but soon clutching at it, kneading it, until it began to rise in her grip. I imagined her opening my pants and she did it. I thought how exquisite it would feel to be in her hot, wet mouth and she obliged me. She bobbed her head rhythmically back and forth along my length. She would take it as far down as she could, to the point where she would gag, then, she would remove it from her mouth all together, and flick at the tip of it with her tongue. I don't know how long this went on. She sucked me, it seemed like forever, until it came to me that there was an even hotter and wetter paradise than the one I was already in (one without teeth no lessha, ha). No sooner had that thought occurred, than she was on her back in the dirt with her legs spread in the air, staring blankly at the rocky ceiling. Her expressionless face may not have communicated the passion she was feeling, but her pink, wet sex spoke volumes. I stared at it, enraptured (now who was mesmerized?).

I lowered myself on top of her and slid it in. There was resistance, physical resistance, but I expected that, had assumed she was a virgin. Virginity never deterred me. I pressed harder. It burst. She bled. I'd taste that later, just a taste, not a feeding. I pumped into her repeatedly. Her body writhed in ecstasy, her hips bucked up to meet my every thrust, but her face betrayed nothing. Her head was arched back and her eyes still stared blankly, toward the staircase. I continued pounding into her, relentlessly, and could have done so all night, without release... because I never find release. But she found it, and her body shook in the throes of an uncontrollable orgasm. Her face contorted in silent ecstasy. I watched her face, the expression on it. Finally, an expression on her face. I relished the telltale evidence of the pleasure I was giving her. Her head was still arched back, her stare still vacant, fixed on the foot of the staircase. And then I saw it, a real foot at the foot of the staircase. Or rather a boot, von Gelding's boot! He drove the stake through me with the force of his arms, narrowly missing my heart, but piercing that of his daughter. Without a sound, betraying no pain, she died in my arms.

Since undergoing the change, I have never felt sympathy, or pathos, or even pity, for any of my victims. Not for those I've fed on. Not for those I've ravaged. I have drives, needs, and my victims fulfill them. There's nothing emotional about it, nothing even philosophical. It's just necessary and efficient. But that night, after von Gelding needlessly killed his own daughter in his attempt to destroy me... That night I let out a scream. I don't know precisely if I was the source of the scream, or if someone, or something, some greater being, was screaming through me, in cosmic frustration at the purposelessness of von Gelding's act, so uniquely human in its stupidity and fanaticism. I don't know if it was me that screamed that scream, but I do know it was me, that pulled the stake out of my own back and stuck it through von Gelding's as he fled up the staircase in terror. And I do know it was me that set the fire that burned his manor to the ground. And I do know as I sit here, in my bedchamber, in the safety of castle Mesmeroso, I do know that I will hunger, that I will feed, that I will ravage. But I don't know who is more cursed: my kind or human kind. Diary, perhaps you can answer that question for me.