Prologue (1953)
Her scent hit me like a concrete wall. And then I saw her.
She was the most beautiful creature that I had seen in my extended life. I wanted her, I craved her, but not in the way that others of my kind would want. She was talking to a group of girls, her jet black hair pulled back into a twist at the back of her head, her delicate hands intertwined in front of her like the lady she was supposed to be.
Her eyes flicked over towards me, and for that one second, I could feel the magnetic pull towards her chocolate brown eyes. It took all of my strength not to step out from under the shadow of the trees and take her with me now. But she had broken the gaze, and was now walking away with her friends. I knew that she saw me, and the way that she hesitated, I knew that she had felt the pull as well.
I followed her from the shadows, jumping from tree to tree until she was in a beautiful garden. Gradually, they were joined by other girls until there were at least 30 of them milling around. A large lady sauntered up to them and called them into a line. I stayed in my tree, hidden from view and watched as one by one the girls were called up on stage. Now that she was standing with the other graduates, she stood out greatly, and not just in her beauty, but the way she was always fidgeting and making slight faces at her headmistress's speech. These were tiny, insignificant details that humans couldn't pick up, but it told me of her personality and I felt the pull towards her become stronger.
I watched as her eyes started darting around the crowd, completely ignoring her headmistress now. Her right hand started tapping her left in impatience, and as her hand shifted, it revealed a large diamond that glinted in the sun.
She was engaged.
I grabbed the nearest branch and squeezed, the emotion that coursed through me was unbearable. This woman, who was so beautiful, in scent and in looks, already belonged to somebody else. I searched the crowd to see if I could find the man who held this girl's heart.
And I found him. He was a tall man, well built (not that it mattered how strong he was), and very wealthy, according to his power suit. I squeezed the branch harder in my fight to stop from jumping on him and killing him in an instant. He wasn't good enough for her. He would make her stay at home and become a mere housewife when it was so obvious she was deemed for greater things. It would be too easy to rid this man, to grant this girl this one favour, but there were too many witnesses.
Suddenly, the branch cracked with a loud snap. Everybody looked around for the source of the noise but I was quicker. I was out of there before the noise even reached their ears and their human brains registered that something had happened. I was out of there before I lost my restraint and kidnapped the girl.
As I was running, a plan started to form in my head. I didn't want her in the way my kind would have wanted her. She was too beautiful to be lifeless. I didn't want her for the couple of sweet seconds it would have taken to drain her of her blood. I had to have her...
Forever.