Beginnings
I suppose we should begin with the basic of the whole thing. I am in fact a vampire, brought into this state of existence in the Year of Our Lord 1796 by woman who was introduced to me as a quote unquote "lady of evening". The gentleman who introduced us - one of her servant, I later discovered - had an add sense of humor.
But I digress. Yes. I do drink human blood. Without the nourishment it provides, I will wither away; with it, I will live forever. Yes, forever. Unless destroyed - and destroying one of the Damned is no mean feat, I can assure you - we vampires are every bit as immortal as the legends say. Only the sun, and the emotions it engenders, remain forever foreign to us: we Kindred can drink in the night of countless ages, can remain unchanging while all that we crumbles to dust around us and replaced by another stage-set that in turn crumbles to dust, and so on...
Ah, once again, I lose the way. Blood, yes blood. I can get by on the blood of animals - most of us can, except the true elders of our kind - but such a diet is unpleasant. Unpalatable. No, we all want to feed on the best vintages, otherwise one goes around all the time with a dull ache in one's gut that just never goes away. It gets worse the hungrier one gets, I might add; a vampire who goes too ling without feeding is liable to demonstrate a regrettable lack of self-control.
There are other tell-tale physiological sings of my condition. My heart does not beat; the strength of my will alone suffices to force blood through my body. My internal organs, by all accounts, have long since atrophied into vestigial husk, but that won't matter to a coroner, as once I am truly killed I will rapidly decompose into dust. In the meantime, however, I'm not troubled by such trifles as breathing, extremes of temperature and the like. My skin is cold, unless I take effort to warm it. Doing so takes effort, though, and the expenditure of precious blood. Regular food is an abomination unto me, and it doesn't sit for more that a few second in that remain of my stomach. Even with eternity stretching before me, my dear, I have better things to do with my time than to crouch over toilets, heaving ashes and gobbets into the bowl.
In layman's terms, then, I am no longer human. For all intents and purposes, I am simply a blood-drinking, ambulatory cadaver, indistinguishable from any body in a morgue unless I am moving about. I save the niceties like warming my flesh and remembering to blink for company, such as yourself.
So thank you, dear. Keeping myself fresh and rosy-looking for you is costing me more than you know.
Ah, we return to the drinking of blood, the defining act, as it were, of my state. Yes, am afraid it is necessity, though one can leave one's prey alive. All that requires is a little self-control and a touch of effort to close the wound - and no, we don't all drink from neck. You can cross another cliche off your list. The problem with leaving one's prey alive, however, is that unless one has certain... protection, she remembers. Such breaches of the Masquerade are not looked on kindly by the vampiric powers that be. Oftentimes, it makes more sense simply to kill.
