Vampires live for thousands of years, or so I was told during my initiation into the most secret of societies—the vampire clan of rural Pennsylvania. There are no written records, of course, but the elders tell of beings who lived before Hammurabi's laws were first written in Sumeria. These were primitive beings, illiterate nomads who were treated as senile grandparents. They were given a place in our sect, but their movements were restricted and their opinions were never taken seriously. It is difficult to tell how long they've been around or from what process of evolution they arose. Their very existence, hidden though it must be of necessity, proves Darwin right: evolution does happen and the fittest do shouldn't be supposed that every vampire lives to see many thousands of years, however. Some choose to depart from the world on their own terms. Some of are killed by other vampires, an event that appears to us only because of our increased powers of memory and the extraordinarily negative connotations we attach to the passing of one of our own.I came into the clan after one of our number died, flinging himself into the sunlight with a maddened pre-calculation that falls upon us at times. When one of us passes, no matter what the reason, another is selected to replace the one who passed. We are always thirteen in number—no more and no less. If a vampire turns a mortal lover, they are both of them destroyed. The last such occasion was sixty-four years ago. The story was given to me as a cautionary tale lest I fall into the same trap. I am, or so I was told, the first human to be turned lawfully in all that man's name was Jory Pickett. He had been born before the Civil War and had been turned when bands of soldiers roamed the countryside looking for Native Americans to kill. This did not happen in Pennsylvania but it was told to me by way of illustration so that I might understand the feelings of white men at the time. The deceased was a Native American vampire, a remnant of those days when Pennsylvania was largely uninhabited wilderness. He kept to his customs and native dress, and was shot to death in 1864. Jory, then, came to fill the void they felt all too keenly.I do mean that, for he did seek us out. He knew of the clan's existence and did not believe us a fictive invention of scaremongers. He was accepted because he was a child of the new age, raised an educated man in a time where such men were considered a kind of pseudo-nobility by those who did not have the Latin or Charles Dickens from distant England. Vampires in the clan—three women and nine men—had all been raised without letters. Jory was a man who could help them understand the new age power that swept away so many old notions as though they were miniature castles of first, Jory got along with the clan. They taught him to drink blood discreetly so as not to arouse suspicion and how to pass the time in other ways when feeding was not required. The legends about vampires are mostly true: we burn under the touch of sunlight, though not of moonlight; we have to drink blood—the blood of humans is best and the blood of vegetarians is best; we can tell, for there is more energy in their bodies. It is a rare treat for us to across one who eats plants only. The clan is pleased with the current age for more people are ascribing to this diet. We do not necessarily have to sleep during the day; we merely have to avoid sunlight. Summers in Pennsylvania have long days and short nights, and because the clan did not choose to be asleep more than awake as some others have, we had to live underground. At the time of Jory's entrance to the clan, they lived in a deep cavern with the bats and the sound of dripping water of the ponderous stalactites. They marked time by the use of an hourglass which was turned every four hours. They tracked the days of the week, for it was Jory's new perspective which invigorated the clan from the sluggish routine they had been in for a century or Pickett was a more passionate than anyone had counted on. He valued the company of others and found life in the cave with interludes of feeding by moonlight to be something he could tolerate, never enjoy. Jory wanted to interact with society, to laugh at parties, to cry at the opera, and to flirt with women despite the blood pulsing in their necks the he must have heard as surely as all vampires hear it. He restrained himself as no other members of the clan had for a while. The kills were bloody and savage, taken from a repressed need they tried to allay but could not deny. Jory was different, though. He did not deny his urges, but chose the place and time to give in to them. A thief would go missing or a drunkard's body was found in a river in another county, with the local authorities not knowing or caring who the man was to look closely enough at his body for the bite marks that soon disappear as postmortem rigor sets in. Jory proved himself to be an example of how things could be done, a bridge between one age and clan, as with every vampire clan, is a clan of storytellers. Nothing is ever forgotten, even through the centuries. Jory's stories quickly became the stuff of legend in the clan, told and re-told in the cave by candlelight. The plot of a play, the gossip revolving around a young woman promised to a man who all agreed did not deserve her, and the other various fascinations came into the cave during these days. As Jory taught them to read, newspapers became an unexpected delight. Now, they not only had news from the local towns but also news from abroad, the words of world leaders presented to them for the first time in their it was that in the fall of 1947 with the clan living in a bomb shelter of its own design, Jory had become the unofficial leader of the clan through all the innovations that he had added. He brought them into a new century; they had a radio, two typewriters, and enough food to keep up the appearance of a shelter, though it was never consumed. The clan had anonymity and comfort. Unbeknownst to anyone, however, Jory's passion for women led him to fixate on a local girl: Jennifer clan knew everything about her, but they've never seen fit to tell me. From the first, the clan could tell that the relationship was not at all usual. Jory had enjoyed women but had known when to stop. Jennifer changed the rules or Jory had chosen to disregard them. The result was that Jory sought to bring Jennifer into the clan. The number thirteen had been arbitrary; not going over that number had been decided as a means to keep attention away from the clan and vampires altogether. A bigger clan meant more dead bodies and people gone missing inexplicably. Historically, it has happened before. Sometimes they called it the plague, sometimes feeding occurred during a war, of which there have been many. After the initial backlash and persecutions, vampire clans regulate each other and then themselves. Over time, new vampires were rare. At around 100 years old, Jory was considered new. That made it even harder for the clan to destroy him and night under a waning moon, the two had stolen away to the cave where we had once lived. By the time they spoke, three of the brethren, all of them elders, were listening in secret."I fear they will destroy you, or us," Jory confessed. "I did not anticipate their reaction to you.""Is such a thing possible?" Jennifer asked. "Can we be killed?""They would say that we are the undead—demons, shades, something unholy. This is what most people believe about us," Jory said, measuring his words. "There may be truth to that, but I don't think so. I believe we are demonized because we take life. We are inimical to human existence, so it is easier for them to ascribe supernatural aspects to us. In point of fact, this isn't true. We are more fragile than might be suspected. We can be killed by dismemberment, disembowelment, stabbing, shooting, beheading and burning. Yet, it's been proven that garlic doesn't affect us at all."Jennifer had been making a face and then she laughed, a quiet tinkling sound that carried across the night. "Wooden stakes through the heart?""Same as anyone, any other human, that is. It will kill us. But it is no more or less effective than any other method.""And you all know the best ways to do each other in, don't you?""We do, and they are stronger than I am. Faster, though, is another question.""Then we run?" Jennifer asked."It is all we can do. I will not sacrifice you to them, nor will I do nothing while they dispose of us. We will run north to escape the daylight. I heard there is a place in this world where the sun doesn't shine for six months out of the year, and that is where we will go. No more underground for us."They clasped their hands together and just as the elders were going to make their move, bolted away.Click Here to Read Immortal Part 2