Smoke And Mirrors

CHAPTER 18: Fifteen Painted Cards from a Vampire Tarot

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"What do you want?"

The young man had come to the graveyard every night for a month now. He had watched the moon paint the cold granite and the fresh marble and the old moss-covered stones and statues in its cold light. He had started at shadows and at owls. He had watched courting couples, and drunks, and teenagers taking nervous shortcuts: all the people who come through the graveyard at night.

He slept in the day. Nobody cared. He stood alone in the night and shivered, in the cold. It came to him then that he was standing on the edge of a precipice.

The voice came from the night all around him, in his head and out of it.

"What do you want?" it repeated.

He wondered if he dared to turn and look, realised he did not.

"Well? You come here every night, in a place where the living are not welcome. I have seen you. Why?"

"I wanted to meet you," he said, without looking around. "I want to live for ever." His voice cracked as he said it.

He had stepped over the precipice. There was no going back. In his imagination, he could already feel the prick of needle-sharp fangs in his neck, a sharp prelude to eternal life.

The sound began. It was low and sad, like the rushing of an underground river. It took him several long seconds to recognise it as laughter.

"This is not life," said the voice.

It said nothing more, and after a while the young man knew he was alone in the graveyard.