Prologue

Blood. The most powerful liquid in existence. It sustains all life. Without it, death. Not just for humans and animals alike, but for my kind too; Vampires. We need blood as much as any living creature – just in a different way. It is that thing which lets us maintain our half-alive status. That rich, red stuff flowing through the veins of every human being on the planet, so salty and yet so sweet…it is our nourishment, our food and water, our most desperate need and craving.
Much like the porphyria sufferers of old, from whom the tales of vampires originated, we lack the ability to create certain chemicals in our blood that are needed for life. So we are suspended in a state of half-death, forced to drink the blood of others to gain the chemicals we need.
There have been those who have tried other ways – transfusions and such. But the shock of human blood entering our systems so rapidly kills us. For some reason, which even the oldest of vampire scientists cannot explain, only by ingesting the blood and letting it seep slowly into our bloodstream through digestion can we get what we need.
The fangs are an evolutionary accessory, lengthened canines designed to make it easier for us to puncture human flesh and get to the crimson wealth inside. Daylight destroys our red blood cells, releasing a toxin into our systems which turns our blood to purple sludge. Garlic, though, is simply a delicious herb on pizza, and anyone, human or not, will die if you stab them in the chest with a great chunk of wood.
Super-speed? Turning into a bat or mist? No reflection in mirrors? All nonsense. We are not myths. We are as real as you. We are no more evil than any carnivore – we feed on what we must to survive, like anyone. It is only that we are a minority, and minorities through history have been prosecuted and killed simply for being different. Some still are, even in the twenty-first century.
We don't deserve the reputation we have, nor the punishment we incur when we are discovered. But in the day of modern technology, it's getting harder for us to hide. There are cameras everywhere. And we must be careful to hide the marks of our feeding, otherwise the media will have a frenzy.
People believe less these days, they don't put stock in myth and legend, but if enough evidence were collected, vampires would be hunted once again, as they were thousands of years before.
And I, for one, do not wish to die.