Likely both.
“Renato! What a delightful surprise! Has it really been two centuries? I suppose time does fly when you’re not busy selling your soul for power. I’m truly honored you came in person. Tell me, how have you been? Still feasting on human misery? Must be a buffet out there.”
Vampires love to talk about themselves, which gives me time to think.
“Have you heard of multi-level marketing? It’s a scheme humans buy into with promises of becoming financially independent, while it siphons thousands of dollars from their bank accounts. Our down lines worship us and allow us to feed without a fight. And their misery runs so deep, it makes their souls taste incredible.”
Jesus Christ. Of course, these parasites would turn to capitalism.
Why hunt when you can trick your prey into begging for the privilege?
“You’re an inspiration to us all,” I say, my voice thick with ego-flattening sarcasm.
The five-thousand-year-old soul-sucker standing on my porch in broad daylight, wearing oversized sunglasses and a Bluetooth earpiece, is what makes the modern era truly horrifying.
He’s what happens when immortality outlives dignity, though, judging by the lies they’ve sold for centuries, I’m not sure they had any to start with.
All that nonsense about sunlight killing vampires? Total bullshit.
They bubble and warp like old film left in the sun, curling and twisting until they’re unrecognizable. Not fatal, of course. Just humiliating.
Think translucent skin, zero melanin, centuries of darkness, and vanity brittle enough to crack. One sunbeam and they’re pink, peeling, and dabbing at their wounds with a limited-edition Balenciaga scarf.
Naturally, some idiot saw that and wrotecursed by God.
And vampires never corrected it.
If one of them stepped onto a beach at noon, the worst they’d get is some superficial blistering. Painful, maybe, but nothing they can’t buy their way out of.
Not that they’d ever admit it.
No, they pay human authors obscene amounts of money to keep the “bursting into flames” theory alive.
Their collective meltdown over sparkly vampires in the early 2000s? Highlight of my goddamn life.
There’s a reason that poor author hasn’t written anything of note since—and honestly? She doesn’t need to. She already pissed off half the slow-blooded elite and made a fortune doing it.
So, when one of them shows up in broad daylight, smug and peeling, I take it seriously.
Even though the soul-sucker stands at the end of my driveway, I’m careful not to say or do anything that would allow the vampire to enter my home.
Thankfully, that bit of folklore holds up.
Multiple heavily armed draughs surround Renato, each one of them desperate to become a vampire one day.
Fools, the lot of them. All so eager to die for a promise that will never come.
Once again, despite the mythos of your paperback fantasies, no one’s ever been “turned.”
Vampires are born. Not made.
The bite doesn’t give humans power. It gives vampires lunch.
Just like the “bursting into flames” myth, they pay well to keep this fantasy alive, too.
It keeps the desperate crawling.
“Shall I call you Ezra in this era?” Renato muses, his tone infuriatingly idle, like he’s commenting on cloud cover instead of my name.
