world… Have you, perhaps, heard of the living dead? The walkers of the night?”
“Do you mean ghosts?”
“No. Vampires are…” Seba considered his words.
“Hold on,” Larten said, a memory sparking somewhere inside his head. “You’re not a bloodsucker, are you?”
“Now you have it,” Seba beamed.
“I remember Vur telling me…” What? Larten only had a dim recollection. Vur had told lots of tales. It was something about creatures who drank blood and lived forever.
“There are many legends about vampires,” Seba said. “Most are unreliable. We do drink blood to survive, but we are not killers. We do no harm to those from whom we feed.”
“A monster who doesn’t kill?” Larten was skeptical.
“Not monsters,” Seba corrected him. “Just peoplewith extraordinary powers. Or weaknesses, depending on how one looks at it.” Seba uncrossed his legs and stretched. “I cannot recall my exact age, but I am more than five hundred years old.”
Larten grinned—he thought it was a joke. Then he saw Seba’s expression, and his smile faded.
“All vampires start life as humans,” Seba continued. “We turn from the path of humanity when another vampire bloods us.” He held up his hands, and Larten saw small scars at the tip of each finger. “My master cut my fingertips, then his own, and pumped his blood into me. That is how I became a vampire.”
“Why did he do it?” Larten asked.
“I wanted him to.” Seba explained that vampires aged at one-tenth the rate of humans, meaning they could live for several hundred years. He told Larten of their great strength and speed, the codes of honor by which they lived. He explained about the hardships, the way humans feared and hunted them, how sunlight killed them after a few hours, their inability to have children.
Larten listened, entranced. Like most of his friends, he believed fully in a world of ghosts and magic, demons and witches. But this was the first time he had been exposed to the reality of that world, and it was far different than he’d imagined.
Seba told Larten some of the many myths about vampires. Crosses were meant to frighten them. Holy water could burn them. You had to drive a stake through a vampire’s heart, then cut off his head and bury him at the center of a crossroads to stop him from rising again. They could change shape and turn into bats or rats.
“All rot!” Seba snorted. “The hysterical rantings of superstitious fools.”
Larten had heard some of the tales before, but in relation to other monsters. He asked Seba if they were also real—demons, witches, and the rest.
“Ghosts, yes,” Seba said seriously. “And witches. As for demons and the like… well, in five hundred years,
I
have not seen any.”
He told Larten how he had been blooded as a child, and spoke of some of the countries he’d visited and a few of the famous people he’d met. Larten didn’t recognize most of the names, but he didn’t admit that, not wanting to appear ignorant.
Finally, when Seba felt the boy had learned enough about the world of vampires for one night, he reversed the question. “And you?” he asked gently. “Why are you here, so far from home and other humans?”
Larten’s first instinct was to make up a story–he didn’t want to confess to his terrible crime–but Sebahad been honest with him, and Larten didn’t want to lie in return.
“I killed a man,” Larten said hollowly, then told Seba the whole sorry tale. He cried while telling it. This was the first chance he’d had to think about what he’d lost—not just his best friend but his parents, his brothers and sisters, his entire way of life. But he didn’t let the tears overwhelm him. He kept talking, even when it hurt to speak.
Seba nodded slowly when Larten had finished. “From what you say, that wretch of a man deserved to be killed. Aye, and long before you struck the fatal blow. But murder always hurts. It is right that we grieve when we kill. If