The day was cold and the sun was nowhere to be seen. This didn't bother Marquise, light was insignificant for a person whose eyes could see to the magnitude of his. The darkness was his home. He hadn't been outside before 9:00 pm since 1874. This wasn't something to be taken lightly either, especially since he had no one to welcome him out into the world. He had been hunting and killing alone for most of his life though so loneliness wasn't on his mind as he emerged from the tunnels beneath the city where he was born more than one hundred years ago.
The only visible emotion on his face was amusement as he walked among unsuspecting people who gave him barely a thought as they bustled along. There was nothing particularly suspicious about him. His caramel colored eyes were meant to seduce and entrance younger ones but had no effect on the clueless adults who were trying to get home for dinner after a rough day at the office. His neck length messy black hair shone as though it had just been washed. Expensive black leather clothing encircled his lean muscular frame. He wasn't invisible, but he was far from the most noticeable being in the city.
Marquise made his way to the outskirts of the city, and eventually to the rocky terrain surrounding Briny Beach, the place where he and his siblings had played many years before this story takes place. He sat in an outcropping of smooth rocks that formed a comfy chair. He and his brother had discovered it just shy of Marquise's twelfth birthday. He was shocked to see it was still here.
It took Marquise a few moments to realize that he wasn't alone. A few hundred yards down the beach stood three young children. A girl, a boy and an infant. The baby seemed to be chewing on something that even Marquise's eyes couldn't make out from so far away. The girl, who seemed to be the oldest of the three, was throwing rocks into the water and watching them sink into the ocean. It looked like a tedious process and Marquise wondered why it seemed to amuse her so.
But it was neither the baby nor the girl that kept Marquise's attention for so long. The boy squatted beneath his sister examining the creatures in the tide pools. His eyes were acute and sharply focused. A small smile shone on his face as he rose from his crouch to show his older sister what appeared to be a hermit crab. She smiled back and the boy's eyes gleamed. Marquise licked his lips. He wanted him. All of them. But especially him.
They wandered around the beach a little while longer before another human appeared out of the thick layer of fog that separated the beach from the rest of the city. He was not nearly as toothsome as the other three so Marquise assumed he was not of direct blood relation. The newcomer began to speak after having had a long coughing fit. Marquise held his breath and his ears perked up.
"Your parents," the man said, "have perished in a terrible fire." The children didn't say anything. "They perished," the man continued, still not looking directly at the children, "in a fire that destroyed the entire house."
Marquise broke his line of vision away from the beach and toward the gray sky. He could not imagine how they must feel, having just been given this terrible news. He tried to feel sad but all he could think about was sinking his teeth into the soft skin of the boy's neck. He closed his eyes and tried to maintain control of his thirst but he knew from the prism of experience that it was useless. By the time he looked back toward the beach, the orphans and the grim reaper were gone, leaving Marquise alone once again. Only loneliness, this time, was just as bitter and miserable as it should've been.