Chapter 1:

His name was unimportant, it always had been in his opinion. Of course, there had been a time where at functions, symposiums, and the like that he had been very well known by a specific name and status, but in the years that had passed, like the landscape of the state around him, it too had faded. Yet in landing in these airfields, in signing the registry, names were of at least some importance even to him. The years had not been kind even to a hardened killer. The explosion of the digital age, a violently changing weather world, and the stranglehold that a war on terror had on flight itself made the world a frightening place . . . even for a vampire. Though it was still relatively easy to ferry himself from venue to venue using either the same or a similar name and certainly the same plane (he couldn't dream of parting with Rowena after all these years even though she herself was a stolen vehicle) it was harder to survive, to even maintain conversation with the simplest and most simple-minded of humans. It was, indeed, as harsh a world as his father, over 100 years before, had warned him.

For many years the name Abraham Seward had suited him, then Aurelio Valentinas (he had reveled in the awe most had of its exotic appeal before it, too, grew tiresome), then for a time it was Daniel Andrews, and then there was Dwight, Dwight Renfield. Not the most original of monikers and certainly not the most pleasant sounding especially compared to Aurelio Valentinas, but it suited his purposes for many a visit to his preferred hunting grounds. That was, until, a run-in with the press or rather, psuedo-press. Sensationalist literature had once been his butter for the plain bread that was his rigorous studies and, while his mother also shared a love of it, he had never imagined it becoming so strangely used in the world nor that he himself would be the subject of it. It was, in truth, flattering to a certain degree, but after the fourth day it grew older than himself and far too quickly.

After the encounter with the terrified writer, which he could scarcely remember properly, he had considered changing the name he used to avoid suspicion. One scenario remembered him leaving the sobbing, heaving, soaked with urine writer amidst the carnage of an overfeed to explain himself to the authorities after warning him away. Yet another memory told him that he had partially turned the man as punishment for making the most demeaning of demands even after being left heaving, sobbing, and urine soaked. In that scenario he had been killed by the authorities who had come to take hold of the killer and Dwight had narrowly escaped being guilty of the blood of two fine, upstanding officers. If there was one thing Dwight could not abide, it was killing those of great value. Of course, children were primarily off limits, but since they were also primarily useless creatures they were just as apt to be prey as adults. Only those that commanded his unusual respect; soldiers who had gone above and beyond taking a great deal of enemy life with them, police officers who put their lives in harm's way daily (particularly difficult in his home state), and even sensational creative artists who thrived on the suffering of others, which he had come to see as his brethren, were all safe from being a meal provided he was not completely frenzied.
On the very rare instances where a child had been at the receiving end of a feeding, it usually made a suitable companion until it would inevitably wander off either to die without being properly cared for or perhaps to live on in another manner much like Dwight himself. He preferred to consider the latter. Still, regardless of who was killed in his fits of hunger and why, his name never mattered in the least.
But like all things that bear no purpose or meaning, fate, pallete and brush in hand, stepped in one day and gave it more than importance. His name, like the life he had lived as an aristocrat so long ago, was quite dead; but with the single stroke of the brush in the hand of fate, his name not only lived again, it lived with a similar affection and adoration, at least to as great an extent as it could being attached to a vampire. As the sun set, drifting behind the dusty brown clouds of the New Hampshire sky, the door to the plane opened once more and fate began to turn the wheel of time in a new direction. The creature that exited halted, a strange sensation moving through him that he hadn't felt since being followed years before. He was being followed again, though this time more from a distance and more thoroughly. In his youth, an old servant at the house had told him that a shiver or the sense of dej'a vu meant that someone had stepped over your grave in the future. There was no possible way for that to be true, he knew that now more than ever with his grave safely stowed nearby in the plane itself, but the concept was still a chilling one. If it wasn't one's grave being crossed, then perhaps it was something else, something more sinister like one's very life-line.

(*)

"Here it is, N101BL, Ernstead in New Hampshire, Cessna Skymaster make 337," a bespectacled young man announced proudly. The young woman seated next to him drew in a sharp breath and glanced over the dossier in her hand again as her partner sipped a cup of coffee in an almost self-congratulatory gesture. "So how do we do this? This has never happened before, not in New England."

"Not that we're as aware of, Jeremiah, but as I have said repeatedly, if vampires were brought to the Americas from Europe, then they would've followed all the same patterns of our history geographically speaking," she corrected, narrowing her eyes at the surveillance camera situated just so on the airstrip's alarm system. "This is our first assignment for such a thing. I suggest we follow all that our predecessors in the south did and add a few adjustments of our own for location and modern advances of course."

"And let's not forget this guy can actually fly, not just produce those prehensile wings that some of them can," Jeremiah added quickly, zooming in on part of the image. His partner, Ceridwen, looked away. This was part of the assignment she could not stomach, the slaughter and the lead up to it no matter how long or how pleasant the interaction with the victim was. "Still, I guess there has to be a way to clip his wings, so to speak."

"That is not our purpose, Jeremy," she corrected quickly. He sighed and shook his head reproachfully. "Pilot's license and plane or not, his skill was fine-tuned before death, so to speak."

"So? He wasn't Howard Hughes, so it's not like he could make one if we took it away or cornered him away from aircraft at all," Jeremy reasoned.

"You underestimate a creature with the intellect of more than 100 years. He did see the end of the Civil War, you know," she reminded coolly.

"Yeah, as an infant and in Maine, the state that saw the least, if any, activity during any war," Jeremy added with a scoffing laugh.
Ceridwen sighed and closed her eyes, not wanting to point out that one battle, a very tiny one, had in fact been fought in Maine as well as harboring the height of abolitionism (going as far as to declare that they themselves would secede should the Union not abolish slavery). Nor did she mention as she stood and straightened the papers, turning away from the computer screen as a muffled scream followed by a gurgling 'crunch', that the general responsible for much of the success of Gettysburg was from Maine as well as Lincoln's first Vice President and Harriet Beecher Stowe herself. Maine's contributions to other wars, including the training of numerous heroic pilots in Kittery for the Second World War, and all of the rest of the state's long and rich militaristic history were pushed aside in her mind. Ceridwen's blood churned at the sound of life being drained from another human even from this distance, safely at their headquarters miles away in Virginia.

"We're losing time," she announced, hoping to prompt Jeremy to end the transmission from the camera and head off on their assignment, though their exact point of arrival would be unkown for now.

"No we're not, you're just not used to the process," Jeremy said with a heavy sigh, doing exactly as Ceridwen had hoped. "You just have to think of it like any horror flick. It's not real from this distance and . . . "

"It is exactly that attitude that prevents the saving of life," she corrected quickly. "What do your predictions have as the possible triangulation he'll make for his next target?"

"Actually, it looks like he's headed far north," Jeremy replied as he opened the dossier and pointed to three listed locations. "Bangor, Orono, or Portland Maine."

"Bangor, then. Strange, though; it has an International Airport and one that's too large for feeding," Ceridwen said with a sigh.

"They said the same thing about Wilmington, you know," Jeremy reminded as they moved quickly out of the small office they shared and into the rest of the sterile building. "Too big, too busy, too many people, and children, too. That didn't stop him."

"He had no personal connection to Wilmington," Ceridwen added as they exited the building, both feeling their heart rates pounding against the looming assignment.

"And he has some kind of connection with a place like Bangor?" Jeremy laughed as he gestured towards their own means of transportation, this one by land, a large van equipped to become both a transmission center for information and an ambulance if needed, though very basic. "Not even senators have personal connection with that place."

"He does," she said flatly. Jeremy studied her expression as she settled in. It was flat and resolved, clearly trying to keep out any fear, excitement, or other emotions that might make her susceptible to or already a victim of whatever psychic power he held. Ceridwen was chosen for the assignment because of keen skill and her ability to find out information that no one else could, though none of her superiors questioned how. Jeremy started the engine, still watching his partner carefully. She was, after all, also his adopted sister and this made their assignment to study and interact with a dangerous vampire on behalf of the Preternatural branch of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention more precarious than any they had embarked on either apart or together. She suddenly smirked as she turned to him. "He was raised there."