THE BLOOD VIVICANTI

Part 1

Mary Paige

created by

Becket & Anne Rice

written by

Becket

Text copyright © 2014 by Becket

ISBN: 0-9898785-6-2

ISBN-13: 978-0-9898785-6-2

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the products of the imagination of the creator(s) or are used fictitiously.

Under copyright law, if you are not the copyright owner of this work, you are forbidden to reproduce, create derivative works based on this work, download, distribute copies of the work, decompile this work without Becket’s express written permission.

CONTENTS

Title

Copyright

Becket’s note

THE BLOOD VIVICANTI - Part 1

Coming next in Part 2

About the authors

Credits

BECKET’S NOTE

In 2011, Anne Rice and I began talking about the development of a new breed of blood drinkers.

The first ground rule was that they had to have an entirely different cosmology from her other supernatural stories.

She and I spent many weeks emailing back and forth, sharing copious detailed notes. We had several energetic lunches and dinners, whence we discussed the foundation and framework of the story you’re about to read. We swapped ideas about the strengths and weaknesses of these new blood drinkers, ideas about the characters themselves as well as their back-stories, and more ideas about potential narrative devices.

One of the amazing facets of Anne’s writing method is that she seems to devote almost as much time to selecting the right names for things as she does to carefully crafting the narrative. Both go hand in hand, I’ve learned from her. She’s taught me much. The right name is as important as le mot juste.

But what name would we call our new blood drinkers?

One day, after we’d spent weeks thinking about what to call this new breed, I came into her office as she thumped closed a Latin textbook. She beamed at me with her irresistible smile. She told me she knew what to call our blood drinkers. She had not chosen a Latin word, but had developed a new word from Latin phraseology.

What was the new word she’d developed?

“Vivicanti,” she said as her smile broadened.

I loved the word instantly!

“Our blood drinkers will be called,” Anne Rice announced: “The Blood Vivicanti.”

Then it was my job to write the story.

I passed by you and saw you flailing about in your blood.  As you lay in your blood I said to you: “Live! and grow up like a plant of the field.”

You grew up and became tall and arrived at full womanhood.  Your breasts were formed and your hair had grown.  Yet you were naked and bare.

—Ezekiel 16:6-7

CHAPTER ONE

Half Title

CHAPTER TWO

Mary Paige

My name is Mary Paige.

My skin is as white as a porcelain doll, but I’m not as fragile.

My eyes are as green as emeralds. They shine like lanterns in the moonlight.

My hair is as black as ravens. It hangs just past my shoulders in gentle waves.

Some call my nose a “button.” Some say it’s “cute.”

I have the body of a gymnast, small and lean and graceful. I wish I were as tall as five feet. People tower over me.

I was made a Blood Vivicanti when I was seventeen years old.

I was chosen to become what I am because of my photographic memory.

The scientist who made us – Wyn is his name – chose me because he was curious to know if my gift could improve his method.

Yes, the Blood Vivicanti are a science experiment. We are still subject to observation and experimentation – a little too much sometimes.

Thankfully I don’t have to scurry through mazes anymore.

There is much about being a Blood Vivicanti that we do not know.

We know we’re no longer human, even though we still look like you.

We know we’re not vampires either, since we do not have fangs, but we do drink blood and eat your Blood Memories. We pierce you with a stinger that comes from the tip of our tongues. We call it our Probiscus.

And we know we might be immortal since I was made a Blood Vivicanti a decade ago and I still look like a seventeen-year-old girl. I’m not complaining, but looking at least twenty-five might not be all that bad either.

Alas, my photographic memory has not improved the method for making the Blood Vivicanti.

But then again, I haven’t really tried to improve us, and neither has Wyn – not since we lost him in a massive explosion at the Locomotive Deadyards.

I don’t think we need improvement anyway. For the first time in my life, I actually like being me.

Yes, I’m petite. Yes, I look like a breakable teen.

But as this tale unfolds, you’ll see how I drank the blood and ate the Blood Memories of a dozen martial artists, a physicist, and a truck driver – how I read and memorized the collected works of Aristotle, Saint Paul, and Ben Loory in a day – and how I also leaped from the 120th floor of a building while simultaneously shouldering a quarter-ton alien coffin.

Not bad for a girl under five feet and a hundred pounds.

I’d like to think that God or fate or some higher purpose made me a Blood Vivicanti to make up for the crummy childhood I had.

My fifth grade teacher was the first to discover my photographic memory. His name was Mr. Wilkey. He had kind dark eyes, a shaven head, and a black mustache and goatee. He was the kind of teacher who would meet you where you were.

My peers in school did not like me at all. I was always carrying around a large book for reading. Fictional characters were my best friends. My peers laughed at me for that.

I’d already read and memorized all my fifth grade schoolbooks. I knew the answers to any question that Mr. Wilkey might ask.

I always sat in the back of class. It helped me avoid being called on to speak. Speaking in class upped my chances for being misunderstood.

I don’t like being misunderstood. Never have. So at that time, I preferred not speaking in class, or to anyone for that matter.

One day, Mr. Wilkey came to the back of the class and he asked me to repeat the lesson on page 11 of our textbook.

I repeated it. My voice was quiet. A field mouse might have heard me.

“A little louder, please,” he said. “The class needs to hear your answer.”

Once again I repeated the lesson from page 11, word for word. It ran over onto page 12.

Mr. Wilkey had an expression that I had not seen before. I didn’t know how to react to it. Today I’d probably call it “controlled astonishment.”

He studied me suspiciously. “Would you repeat that one more time,” he said.

He read his textbook while I recited each word on pages 11 and 12.

He flipped to the next page. “Do you know the lesson on page 13?” he asked.

I did.

“And the one on page 14?”

I did.

“Page 17.”

I did. It was short.

“Page 23… Page 31… Page 75…”

I knew all of them. I recited each from memory.

I was surprised to learn that few people have a photographic memory, although I suspected as much in the first grade, when I was the only one reading and laughing at the funny bits in Slaughterhouse-Five.

Mr. Wilkey tried to show my mom and dad what I could do.

“Mary Paige has an eidetic memory,” he explained.

My parents did not understand that word. They did not understand what it meant to have a photographic memory either, so they did not understand me, to put it mildly.

As long as I did my schoolwork, they left me alone. And I liked being left alone. So I let my grades in school be just above average, neither too high nor too low. Being left alone felt safer than being misunderstood.

Despite my best efforts to survive, Mr. Wilkey set me apart from the rest of the class. He was a kind man. He had no idea what kind of torment he put me through.

My classmates watched me now. They pointed and whispered. They thought I’d been punished. They assumed I was the crazy girl.

Mr. Wilkey gave me larger textbooks to read and special tests to take.

I read A Brief History of Time – The Brothers Karamazov – Man’s Search For Meaning – along with a few college level science books on chemistry, physics, and botany.

I can remember every word of every page of every book.

My favorite scene in The Brothers K was when Ivan’s devil described how an enlightened Russian atheist was sentenced to purgatory. The atheist was doomed to walk in darkness for one quadrillion kilometers.

How long did it take him to walk that mind-boggling distance?

Dostoyevsky wrote that the walk took him billions and billions and billions of eons, earth’s life cycle repeated a centillion times.

I think the walk took him no time at all, all the way from Alpha to Omega. His punishment was not walking that great distance. His punishment was having to enter Heaven after that great journey: He had to learn a new routine, he had to evolve – that’s punishment according to most people whose blood I’ve drunk and whose Blood Memories I’ve gobbled up.

My classmates would have preferred normal people in class with them. Who I was threatened change. How I was challenged them to evolve.

My teacher did all he could for me. But my classmates did what came naturally to them: They pushed me further outside their group.

No one was interested in the kid who could recall everything.

Even though I thought I was alone, I really wasn’t. There was another girl in my class who was also rejected and abandoned. She was quieter than me, if you can believe that.

Her name was Nell.

She and I might have been friends, but she was kidnapped halfway through our fifth grade year.

My classmates didn’t really know what the word kidnapped meant. I could define it, but I didn’t really understand it either. Mr. Wilkey was devastated. He wept so badly sometimes that he could barely get through our classes.

Nell’s kidnapper was never found and neither was she.

Later you’ll see how I met Nell again after many years. Her Blood Memories told me all about how she was kidnapped by someone called Lowen, who also came to be known as the Dark Man.

Lowen is indeed dark. But he’s not quite a man. And he’s not exactly a ghost either.

After fifth grade, no other grade school teachers took an interest in me.

My sixth grade teacher was a woman who was as tired as she was elderly. She didn’t give me large books to read or any specialized tests to take. She wasn’t looking for gifted students. She was looking forward to retirement.

I was no longer set apart from the class. I no longer received attention. I was grateful that life seemed to return to normal, though my classmates kept up their cruel behavior.

Some were leaders and some were followers. They all wanted to be accepted. And being accepted meant making fun of those who were not accepted.

They never forgot that I was not like them and they made fun of me for it.

This routine went unchecked and unchanged throughout the seventh and eighth grade.

My parents seemed to understand me less too.

They liked going to social events. They liked talking with other people and sharing very openly about their happinesses and sorrows.

That wasn’t me at all. I liked silence. I liked not talking to people. I liked being alone in my room for hours.

My parents told me that I was antisocial, they told me that my grades needed to improve, and they told me that I needed to “get a life” – whatever that means. They talked to me, never with me.

They never saw my inner life. They weren’t interested in the worlds of my imagination. They did not seem to know or care that I had read and memorized the collected works of Charles Dickens, Jane Austen, and Frank Herbert.

Yes, the Dune series will one day be categorized as classic literature.

Grade school finished. High school came.

My eighth grade class had a graduation ceremony.

Did I graduate at the top?

Nope.

Could I have?

My IQ was 240 – I could have graduated from college eight times by then.

The summer before freshman year, I read and memorized all my schoolbooks for each grade – freshman, sophomore, junior, and senior level. I could have answered any teacher’s question at any time. I could have graduated from high school on my first day.

I didn’t, though. I chose to go to high school. I have no idea why. Perhaps it was some strange part of me that enjoyed a good penance.

Meanwhile, the kidnapped girl from my fifth grade class, Nell, was being twisted and tortured and spiritually eviscerated. She was becoming the first of a long line of things that were not quite zombies.

And I thought my life was hell on earth.

High school shocked the grade school from my former peers. The togetherness of our eighth grade class crumbled at freshman inauguration. We were joined with other eighth grade classes from other grade schools. We became one student body.

Upper classes called us “fish.”

It would have been more accurate to call us flies. Once the quietness of our new ninth grade class wore off, survival meant vying to be lord of the others.

We were all out of our depth.

Even I was shocked, but not by the schoolwork. High school brought a new definition to the term social work – being social was work.

High school was ground zero for the Darwinian fittest. Clique Alpha to Clique Beta, and all the way down to Clique Omega, were your typical hunter-gatherer tribes. Each in-group specialized in exclusivity, mistrust of outsiders, and hunting in packs like wolves.

Like grade school, high school peers saw the fringes of my photographic memory and they didn’t like what they saw. Mostly they left me alone, but sometimes they made fun of me behind my back.

A part of me wanted them to accept me because I thought that being accepted was the only way to survive the loneliness of life.

Today, another part of me would like to rip out their throats, drink their blood dry, and toss their carcasses to the carrion crows.

I could. I’m powerful enough to do so.

But I won’t, thanks to a wise old man whose Blood Memories taught me the meaning of mercy: Sometimes the best way to love someone is just not killing them.

Lunchtime seemed like a strange experiment. Either it was a study of social mitosis or social vivisection.

Everyone a part of a group sat together.

Others apart from a group sat alone. They hoped to be a part of the larger groups. They didn’t want to be seen with those who were like them, apart from the whole. Ironically they stood out even more.

Some outsiders formed small groups that would survive for a time. They had little internal fidelity. They dissolved quickly when group members were accepted into other groups. Or when the stampede of the strongest group crushed them.

Then there was me.

I usually sat alone under a tree during school lunch. I read more books and I remembered what I read. I also overheard many lunchtime conversations. I never forgot them either.

I can still recall one day with perfect clarity: I was reading and remembering Plato’s Apology with a part of my awareness, while another part was overhearing two students talk about Miss Alpha’s gorgeous clothes, while a third part was observing ants marching toward a praying mantis.

My mind mixed this data together like ingredients in a flavorful stew. Its delicious taste was this realization: The framework of the world is based on needs.

Ants need food and safety and community. So did Socrates. So did my classmates. So did the praying mantis.

The ants killed the mantis to survive. Compatriots killed Socrates to survive. The numerous killed the few for different reasons. Sometimes the few were physically weaker than the numerous. Other times they were intellectually stronger. Regardless, the need to survive was the constant. A fear of change fueled the majority. A fear of evolving hindered them.

My two classmates thought that surviving meant adapting to the trend set by Miss Alpha’s fashion taste. They didn’t know that they were already a part of the numerous. Alphas are the minority.

Those two didn’t survive much longer together. They weren’t the fittest.

Freshman year finished.

I never understood the point of sophomore year, although the actions and attitudes of my peers helped me more accurately comprehend the meaning of the word sophomoric.

Junior year changed my life.

I was sixteen now – the year before I was made a Blood Vivicanti.

But this was also the year when that poor kidnapped girl, Nell, who was still being tortured by Lowen, told the Dark Man about another girl whom she had known in the fifth grade – a girl with a photographic memory.

Sixteen was the year that I started to come out of my shell, which was good. Yet it was also the year that Lowen the Dark Man could more easily hunt after me, which was not so good at all.

Life is rife with irony.

In school, I decided to take an elective called INTRODUCTION TO MUSIC. It was either that or pottery. Music seemed a lot less messy.

My music teacher was called Mrs. Goodwitch. She would play keys on the piano and show us the notes on the scale.

In a day I learned that music is well organized. Most scales have eight notes. One scale has twelve.

Creating a melody involves placing notes in a logical sequence that a listener would naturally enjoy. Creating harmony involves grouping notes together so that their sound waves break against one another as beautifully as waves crash on the shore of the sea.

Each note has a frequency vibration. You humans hear few frequencies. We Blood Vivicanti hear many.

My hearing is fantastic now! From a mile away, the sound of grass growing is like the sound of the tide rolling in. The sound of falling dust is like the gentle crush of snowfall. Many ignored facets of life soothe me and lull me to sleep, especially when nightmares of the Dark Man return to haunt me.

It was exciting to discover that the whole cosmos is musical and rhythmic. And it was even more exciting to adapt my whole world to the melodic pulse of the expanding heavens.

My mind associated the sound of a note with its image on the page. In a day I could see a written note while my photographic memory could easily recall the tone of its pitch.

In a day, music became my second language.

Rhythm bothered me at first, however. Memorizing notes and pitch was easy. But I had never thought about rhythm before.

Everything has rhythm. Heartbeats, growing hairs, mourning, moaning. There’s rhythm in my step. Rhythm in my thinking. Rhythm in your breathing. Everything has the potential to be mathematically broken down. That’s rhythm.

You and I can be rhythmic, especially when I pierce your neck with the tip of my tongue, drink your blood, eat your Blood Memories, and fill you with my venom.

Yes, the Blood Vivicanti are as venomous as king cobras, though not as poisonous. Our venom is this world’s greatest aphrodisiac.

On other worlds, not so much.

Freshman year, I had no idea how valuable learning music would be. It came in pretty handy when I saved earth from a hostile invasion force from the planet Khariton.

They had come looking for Lowen the Dark Man.

Their musical war machines blasted through earth’s defenses with all the grace of Tchaikovsky’s Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy.

My high school music teacher was the first to suspect that I had a gift.

One day, Mrs. Goodwitch happened to be walking by my desk while I happened to be reading and memorizing the notes to a melody. I hadn’t realized I was humming.

Mrs. Goodwitch heard me, she stopped teaching, and she knelt beside me to listen.

The whole class turned to look at me, too. I loathed that kind of attention. Still do.

Mrs. Goodwitch told me to sing again, but I shook my head, too nervous to speak, let alone sing in public.

I was asked to stay after class.

Once all my leering peers had left the room, Mrs. Goodwitch gave me new sheet music. She wanted me to sing the melody.

I glanced at the sheet once and memorized every note. I didn’t need to take the music, but I did it anyway, trying to act like a normal girl.

She sat at the piano, read her sheet music, and played the notes.

This song was complex – beautiful too – the rhythm was confusing, though. But the more I sat inside my photographic memory of the musical notes, and the more I thought about the overall structure of the composition, the less difficult it was and the more it made sense.

It was the same way when I reread The Brothers Karamazov the year before, only that time in the original Russian.

Today, my Blood Memories in tandem with my photographic memory have helped me speak almost every language in the world, from music to Russian, from Klingon to JavaScript.

I didn’t need the piano’s help to sing the melody. Mrs. Goodwitch realized this when she made several mistakes and I didn’t.

She stopped playing and listened to me sing until I finished.

Then she sat still for a long time. Tears welled in her eyes and rolled down her cheeks. She just stared through me, her eyes glazing over. It looked like she was trying to remember something she’d forgotten.

Sometimes I wonder what that’s like.

She didn’t ask me to stay after school again. I thought I’d done something wrong.

A week later, she knocked on the door to my house. She explained to my mom and dad who she was and why she had come for a visit.

“Your daughter has perfect pitch.”

My parents talked about what that might mean for their future. Then they talked about my future. They worried about my future.

Mrs. Goodwitch gave them information about an Academy in Southern California for gifted students.

“In all my years of teaching, I’ve never met a child with your daughter’s talent. She can sight sing and memorize notes effortlessly, but she needs better training.”

For my parents, being artistic was not useful to society. They were like most non-artistic people. They wanted me to do something practical, like be a doctor or a lawyer. They thought that science and math and law were the bricks of society. They did not understand that the arts were the mortar holding together such brittle bricks.

My parents thanked Mrs. Goodwitch for coming over and they kindly asked her to leave.

She showed them pamphlets from the school she’d mentioned. The header on the pamphlets read: IDYLLVILLE ACADEMY OF THE ARTS.

Mrs. Goodwitch then explained to them words that they could grasp – facts, numbers, and success stories.

“The success rate of graduates from this high school is one of the highest in the nation. Over 90% go on to higher education. More than 70% of those have profitable careers as professional musicians. The rest usually become well-qualified teachers.”

My parents thought that a teacher was a good job. They felt assured about my future.

They took me to Idyllville Academy of the Arts.

I had to audition. A small group of faculty members watched me sing. They heard my voice. They said that I would have been a wonderful candidate if I had applied as a freshman. The Academy required students to have much more musical experience. I’d only had one intro music class. But they let me take an admissions test for latecomers.

I scored in the 99th percentile.

Classes would begin in the Fall.

The summer before my senior year was a time of packing and saying goodbye.

There wasn’t much to pack. I donated my books to libraries. I knew all their pages by heart and mind. They had been in my room for show, to keep up the appearance that I was not different.

I said goodbye to two people.

There was little drama. It brought less trauma.

The drama and trauma of hellos was altogether new.

The Academy was in Idyllville, a village in the San Jacinto Mountains, population 230. Idyllville Academy of the Arts would be my new stomping ground. True talents rocketed from there to Julliard and Manhattan and similar prestigious conservatories.

I’d always wanted to rocket somewhere, and I’d hoped it would have been to the nearest habitable planet – habitability being an option, of course.

Attending Idyllville Academy of the Arts wasn’t merely coming to a new school for me. It was like coming home.

It still is home to me.

Last night, for instance, a student group performed at Hatter’s Cafe, right down the road from the Academy. They played the jazz music of John Coltrane with the finesse of professionals. The students were freshman. I sat and watched them in utter amazement. So young, yet so talented.

Later I pierced their necks with the tip of my tongue, drank their blood, and ate their Blood Memories.

This morning I woke up and went straight to the piano to play Epistropy by Thelonious Monk. I not only knew every note, but I could also play the music as though I’d played jazz piano for years.

Let me say it again: Attending Idyllville Academy of the Arts was stepping foot inside the mothership.

How could I play music so well after drinking their blood?

The Blood Memories inside your blood are treasure troves of your talents – the thing you wish to express to the world. So when I drink your blood, I not only eat your Blood Memories, but I also chew on, swallow down, and digest the very best qualities that make you so special and spectacular.

Being a Blood Vivicanti is pretty awesome.

Speaking of motherships – although I didn’t know it at the time, it is an interesting coincidence that Wyn, the scientist who made the Blood Vivicanti, happened to have a mansion in Idyllville, too, wherein he also happened to be hiding an alien from the planet Khariton along with his spaceship.

Small world, literally, in comparison to Khariton, so I’m told.

When I moved to Idyllville, I brought with me only two luggage bags. But I feared I had too much baggage.

My new classmates were unlike any people I’d ever met. They’d come from all over the country, and some from foreign countries. We lived together in dorms. I’d been drowning my whole life. Breathing dormitory freedom was a little suffocating. Now I truly felt like a fish.

In hindsight, I wasn’t flopping about for air. I wasn’t even a beached whale. I was a turtle. My home was on my back.

I fit right in.

The Academy was also for students of creative writing, dance, theater, moving pictures, fashion, and design.

The Academy offered good courses, yes. But its teachers also provided students with lessons that I never knew were possible.

INTRO TO DANCE could have been titled INTRO TO SELF-CONFIDENCE.

DRAMATIC TECHNIQUES could have been titled TECHNIQUES FOR SELF-EMPOWERMENT.

FLASH FICTION, MODERN ARCHI-TECTURE, GEORGES MÉLIÈS – each class could have been a course on maturing in self-awareness.

My old high school never taught that. Does any?

Then there were my music classes.

Studying music meant that you also had to study performance.

Voice lessons meant standing on stage to show the world who you had become and how you loved your self.

Call it: SELF-ACTUALIZATION 101.

Needs met.

My new classmates were nothing like my old. They had an insight into their skills-set. They knew what they wanted to do in life because they had known who they wanted to be since they knew who they were. And they knew who they were because those who formed them trusted them enough to think for themselves.

Was my new situation perfect?

Utopia’s vantage point lacks sight of greener grass – so, no, Idyllville wasn’t perfect. But it was perfect for me at that time of life.

Of course there were jerks at the Academy. But they were a different breed of jerk.

At my old high school, jerks attacked you because they thought you were different.

At the Academy, jerks attacked you because they thought you weren’t skilled enough. The Academy prepared you for the world – and it was an arts school to boot!

Go figure that one.

Those first weeks of school were surprising. I actually had fun.

I read and instantly memorized all my schoolbooks. I even read the books for the other classes.

And my classes were difficult, too, which caught me totally unprepared.

Teachers would not let me sit in the back of class without speaking. They wanted every student to participate. They would ask a question and then they’d pick the student not raising their hand.

During my first week at the Academy, I answered more questions from more teachers than I ever did during my first three years of high school.

Performance was like giving birth. It was painful enough for some to take drugs. Usually it was pretty messy. There was a lot of screaming, a lot of encouraging, and a lot of positive pushing. It brought from me a whole new life.

Do I know what giving birth is like?

Only in my Blood Memories. I have drunk the blood of a legion of mothers. I have eaten their memories. I can recall giving birth to as many children as there are stars in the sky.

In a way I pity Eve and Sarah and all matriarchs.

My vocal teacher was Ms. Wigg, an older woman with large glasses and a short black bob, who stood a little shorter than me.

She called her students in turn to the front of the class. She handed each one different sheet music. None had seen their music before. The purpose was to test our sight-singing skills. We had to perform before our peers.

Ms. Wigg called me up. Somehow I’d managed to go seventeen years without standing before my classmates. The first time is always the worst – but sometimes the worst is not all that bad.

She gave me the sheet music for Ruhe Sanft, an aria from Mozart’s unfinished opera, Zaide. No, I’d never seen it before. To sing it I had to recall the pitch of each note in relation to its notation on the page.

I tried to sing the song. But I was very nervous. My voice was almost a whisper. Ms. Wigg stopped me a few measures in. She could see my apprehension. Her smile showed that she empathized. She told me to close my eyes and to picture myself all alone.

I did. It helped.

A few moments passed. Ms. Wigg could tell when I’d calmed. Then she told me I could open my eyes. She encouraged me to sing once more. I’d already seen all the notes on the page. I knew the music by heart now. Only now I kept my eyes closed. It felt better. Thus did I sing the whole aria, beginning to end, without ever looking at the music, full voice, with as much feeling as I could pour into it.

I finished.

There was an uncomfortable silence.

I opened my eyes.

My classmates were staring at me. I prepared myself to feel misunderstood again.

But the Academy surprised me once more, and not for the last time. My classmates had not applauded for any other student. And they didn’t have to applaud for my performance either, yet they did anyway. My singing had been that good.

It was a good day.

It was a good school.

Soon after that, other students began introducing themselves to me. They asked me my name.

How had I gone seventeen years without my peers ever asking me my name?

How had I gone seventeen years without meeting any friends?

Before then life was the way it was – being misunderstood – being excluded – being isolated – being alone – living lonesome – so how could I have imagined that life could get any better? There was nothing to compare it with.

You see, I’d had to move away from my family, I’d had to get some distance from that old life, I’d had to burst beyond the eggshell of childhood so that I could look back at it and say to myself: What a mess!

MISSING signs were hung up around school. On them was the face of a boy.

He went missing before the first day. His photograph took my breath away. He had shaggy blond hair, sculpted features, strong chin, high cheekbones, broad mouth, full lips, freckles.

Theo. The boy’s name was Theo, I saw.

Some people had stopped looking for him after a month. Some had begun to mourn. A few were beginning to assume he was dead.

They could have never guessed that he had become a Blood Vivicanti.

I would’ve never guessed how delicious his blood would taste streaming down my throat.

Peers at the Academy wanted to be my friend.

I was shocked.

They invited me for coffee at Cool Beans Coffee Shop. The place was packed with tourists from San Diego, Costa Mesa, and Los Angeles. I was going to order Earl Gray tea. Everyone else was having lattes and cappuccinos and other kinds of creamy coffees with mountains of foam. A French woman was the barista. She called them, “Café Fluffy.”

I ordered a coffee. Black. I prefer fewer choices.

My group sat at a round table. It made me imagine King Arthur and his knights. Our group lacked typical Alphas. We were composed of the talented few and the more talented fewer. We were friends who had a future on stage, or a future before a classroom. We talked, we laughed. I listened mostly.

Sometimes someone asked me for my opinion. My responses were usually monosyllabic – “I like it,” or “That sounds right.” I was too timid to trust them with the truth. Meanwhile a library of answers were gathering dust in my mind.

My peers walked around the halls with confidence. Shoulders back, heads up.

I’d always slouched and I’d never noticed it before. I’d also walked with my feet apart, the way men walk. The girls I knew walked one foot before the other – it was sexy – I’d never thought a girl was sexy before – I wanted to be like them – I wanted to be liked by them.

I’d never wanted to be sexy before either.

A boy asked me out to dinner at Hatter’s Cafe one evening. He was no Theo, he wasn’t sexy either, but he was cute. He had meatballs and spaghetti. I didn’t know what to have. He ordered for me.

“Gnocchi with white sauce and pine nuts.”

It was the most amazing food I’d ever had.

He kissed me after dinner. He put his tongue in my mouth. The feeling was exciting and strange. It was my first kiss. I didn’t know what to say afterward. I asked him if I’d bitten his tongue. He didn’t ask me out again.

I didn’t mind. We stayed friends.

They say you always remember your first kiss. Mostly I remember the taste of meatballs and marinara. It’s good enough.

A girl asked me out next. She was naturally blonde, but she dyed blue streaks through her hair. They matched her blue eyes, but she wore black contact lenses. She looked like a china doll.

She was an amazing violinist, too. And I always thought of her as gravity since everyone was drawn to her personality. But my china doll was more fragile than I realized.

Our date was mostly walking and talking throughout the streets of Idyllville. We walked to the local grade school and sat on the swings in the playground. We were like little kids again.

She told me about her life. I listened. She liked that. Maybe no one had ever listened to her before.

She kissed me. She tasted as sweet as strawberries.

The next day she asked me out for another date.

My china doll has long graduated by now. She’s giving outrageously expensive private violin lessons to children of upper class families in Beverly Hills. She always gets good results. She did from me.

I visited her last month. She won’t remember my visit. That’s always the case when you’re pierced by a Blood Vivicanti. You’ll never remember my tongue driving deep into your neck. You won’t remember my venom seeping into your flesh. You won’t remember your blood pouring into my mouth.

What will you remember?

Only the best night of your life.

That’s what my china doll had last month, when I drank her blood and ate her memories.

It’s strange with her Blood Memories in me today. From her point of view, I can remember our first date. I’d thought I was so clumsy with her, but she hadn’t even been thinking about me.

Her Blood Memories have made me a great violinist. I’ve taken up playing Bach’s Chaconne for Solo Violin.

Incidentally, the man who made us, Wyn, his late wife Aemilia loved that piece. I’ve only met her through Wyn’s Blood Memories. Through them I’ve learned that Lowen the Dark Man killed Aemilia rather ruthlessly. Afterward, Wyn harbored an obsessive hate for Lowen. It was through that hate and through Aemilia’s death that the Blood Vivicanti were born.

Life is rife with our interconnectivity, too.

My china doll was like most boys her age – her inner life was more centripetal than centrifugal. But that didn’t matter much to me while we were dating. I didn’t have enough distance from her to know that things could get better.

Besides, I liked the taste of strawberries. Still do.

I’m toying with the idea of piercing her again, not because I need more of her blood or Blood Memories. I just like being inside her and her in me.

My peers at the Academy acted the way I wanted to act. I imitated how they were so that I could stop being who I was. Originality didn’t matter to me. Being understood was a better rush.

I was learning the difference between people who hear you and people who listen to you, and I was discovering that I liked the second kind. I was also learning how to be fluent in the language of music while simultaneously learning the language of interpersonal communication. Both took a lot of listening – although sometimes that interpersonal stuff sounded a lot like monkeys screeching in a zoo.

For the first time in my life, I wasn’t looking forward to the end of the school year. For the first time, school was enjoyable.

My slouching stopped. I started to think about how others viewed me. And I started wearing makeup.

Some friends had to teach me how to coordinate the colors on my cheeks and eyes and lips. – Yes, I had friends now!

I was raising my hand in classes. I was offering answers. Mine were never wrong. Sometimes I accessed too much data in my mind, and I gave too much information to answer a question. Teachers and friends would look at me questioningly then. They might not have understood my response. But they didn’t misunderstand me. They never called me “weird.”

We were all weird. We understood each other.

I was still going off by myself, still sitting alone under a tree, still reading, still remembering, because no matter how many friends I’d made, I still needed time alone. Being around people emptied me. Being alone filled me.

I started working at Cool Beans Coffee Shop to earn money. I wanted to do something I’d never done before: Buy things. I’d never had money before. I’d never bought anything for myself before.

I spent my first paycheck on clothes. My old clothes were the shattered eggshells of an old me.

But, as is the case with life, right when things could not get any better, my whole world got turned upside down.

I was turned into a Blood Vivicanti.

It was either that or death.

It happened one night after work.

I was supposed to walk back to the Academy of the Arts.

Part of me didn’t want to return. It was cult classic night in my dorm. I wasn’t in the mood for popcorn and giggles and Shaun of the Dead, which was strange since Simon Pegg ≈ sigh.

So I decided to stroll alone through the neighborhoods of Idyllville. The village lacks any city planning. Houses have cropped up wherever it seems convenient, each is utterly unique, each is like a doll’s house. The roads are hilly and full of twists and turns, and some are actually paved.

That night it was winter. The sky had darkened. Snow hadn’t fallen yet. The air was frosty. I was bundled up in heavy clothes that I had bought from local shops.

I was listening to music in my head. I don’t have to listen to music through portable media players. I am my own portable media player – iVivicanti. My photographic memory easily recalls every song I’ve ever heard. My mind controls the volume.

As I strolled, I recalled the music to Mozart’s Dies Irae. My mind raised it to full volume. I love that work – Dies Irae! Dies Illa! – “Day of wrath! Day of woe!”

Suddenly two men materialized from the shadows.

I assumed they were from the next village since men often came over to Idyllville for the bar scene.

They were burly and twice as tall as me. They stood before me without speaking. They had thick beards, large paunches, and pluming from them was the stench of beer and cigarettes and something else that I could not name.

I had never smelled the stench of death before.

I assumed that they were ordinary men because I had never encountered anything like aliens or zombies or mad scientists who can turn people into Blood Vivicanti.

These two men weren’t zombies, no, not exactly. Lowen the Dark Man had made them in the same way he had made Nell – by tearing them apart inwardly, ripping their spirits or souls from them, like Peter Pan losing his shadow.

Lowen called these zombified creatures his Sleeper Devils.

I ran into the woods.

Lowen’s two Sleeper Devils chased me.

I’d never had to run before. I’d never been chased before. I didn’t like it. I wasn’t good at it.

The Sleeper Devils almost caught me a few times.

I didn’t know the forest very well and so I ran out of the woods right at the edge of a cliff. Thankfully I managed to stop myself before I fell off, balancing on the edge like some broken bird.

Moonlight shone on the jagged little rocks on the bottom of the cliff. It was a very far drop.

The Sleeper Devils clambered out of the woods, panting and wheezing and coughing. They weren’t used to running either, it seemed. One stood doubled over with his hands on his knees. The other was hugging a tree. Then they came toward me, slowly, prowling.

The thought of jumping off the cliff was tempting.

In childhood, I used to anthropomorphize Death. I used to picture the event as a him, some Grim Reaper from a fairy tale, with glowing red eyes, flowing black cloak, sharpened scythe, and skeletal hands and fingers.

In my early teens, the Grim Reaper seemed as real as Santa Claus. It was a time of life when I had assumed I would die as alone as Ophelia. I had had no fear of death then, although dying worried me a little.

You can imagine my surprise when Death saved me from these two Sleeper Devils.

Death was a third man who came out of the woods. He was strolling leisurely, appearing right behind the other men. They didn’t see him. Yes, he was Death. And his name was Wyn.

Death’s black cloak was actually a $10,000 suit. He stood over six feet tall. He didn’t look much older than forty. His black hair was slicked back. He had a neat clean-shaven face with a strong chin. He had a boyish grin. His dark eyes twinkled.

The confidence and power exuding from Wyn’s mien and gait had never before seemed so perfectly commingled in any human being. But then again, he wasn’t a human being at all. He was a Blood Vivicanti. He was the first of us.

He made us. He was the father of a new breed of blood drinkers.

Wyn had no fear of the Sleeper Devils. He gripped their necks and lifted them off the ground. They looked weightless in his hands. He squeezed and easily snapped their necks. The sound seemed as innocent as two twigs snapping in the woods.

The whole time, Wyn never lost his boyish grin. His eyes never lost that magic twinkle. He never stopped staring at me either as he tossed the Sleeper Devils behind him like ugly ragdolls. The sound of them falling in the woods was faint. It had been a very far throw.

I gasped at Wyn and thought: Him. I want to be like him.

Just then the edge of the cliff broke away.

I lost my footing.

I fell off.

The fall from the cliff was quieter than I would have guessed. The only sound was air rushing in my ears – it sounded like a fine windy day. Falling to my death seemed so peaceful.

Blood Vivicanti are much faster than humans, and Wyn has always been very fast. But he wasn’t fast enough to catch me.

I hit the ground. The sound was horrible.

The pain didn’t feel real. Naturally my mind categorized it. The impact would be something to think about later.

But I couldn’t breathe. And I couldn’t move.

I started recalling the notes of the Confutatis of Mozart’s Requiem. I could hear the melody in my mind – Confutatis maledictis, flammis acribus addictis, voca me cum benedictus – “When the damned are silenced, doomed to acrid flames, you, God, will call me with the blessed.”

But my heart was beating with a strange rhythm. It was slowing. The melody and the rhyme fell apart.

The whole world seemed very confusing now.

My body was getting colder. I scolded myself for wasting my money on those warm clothes.

The stars had been bright. Now they were dimming.

Wyn leaped down from the cliff and landed on both feet beside me.

He knelt over me and leaned close to my face. He peered into my eyes. His boyish grin was gone and I wished it would come back. He had an expression of helplessness now, and that saddened me, since the absence of his boldness seemed to steal away his power.

But he was still very strong. He gathered me in his arms easily.

He spoke in a sonorous voice. “You’re going to be all right. Soon you’ll suffer no more pain.”

He opened his mouth. His tongue extended from between his teeth. And from the tip lengthened a point as small as a bee stinger.

Then it extended even longer.

He lifted my head. His tongue touched my neck. He ran the tip lightly over my flesh. His stinger punctured my skin. He stung me.

Blood ran out in rivulets. His tongue was so penetrating. A pop of air came from my throat.

The venom of the Blood Vivicanti now began seeping into every part of my body. My pain was diminishing. A magnificent sensation bloomed in my belly like a flower. My bones trembled. My muscles stretched.

Wyn drove his tongue deeper down. My body had been so cold. Warmth was now filling me up from within.

He drove deeper.

I gasped.

Deeper.

I think I said something like, “Oh my God!”

I imagined that we must have looked like some demented pietà. But I was mistaken: I looked more like Bernini’s Saint Teresa in Ecstasy.

Wyn pulled away.

He looked tenderly down at me, his mouth dripping with my blood.

“Welcome,” he said, “to the life of the Blood Vivicanti.”

CHAPTER THREE

To be continued

CHAPTER FOUR

Coming next header

I awoke from sleep to more confusion. I had no idea where I was. I was alert and afraid and worried. Questions swarmed like bees in my heart and head.

In a sense, it didn’t seem too different from any other day in the life of a teenage girl.

Suddenly I was aware of countless sights and smells and other sensations. It was a simultaneous attack on all my senses. Light and sound and pain happened all at once, like a lightning strike.

I sat bolt upright in a large bed, holding myself and I screamed, out of pain, out of fear.

Two other Blood Vivicanti were nearby. They heard me. They understood what I was going through. They let me scream.

Sometimes it’s good to let someone scream.

Slowly, the din of the world hushed into white noise and I released my ears. Slowly, my vision came into focus and I could now see much more than I ever saw before, much more than anyone could ever see with human eyes.

I was in a strange and beautiful room, like an enchanted chamber. My bed was king-sized, draped in a white canopy, covered in a cloud-like duvet, twelve pillows, each a different size. At the foot of the bed was a fireplace beneath a widescreen TV, both were roughly the same size, both were much larger than me. In a corner was a table and chairs shaped like twisting vines. Thick green curtains were drawn over a floor-to-ceiling window in a nook. And through a slight parting in the curtains silvery moonlight was spilling in across the floor.

Slowly I inhaled again.

The scent of the man who made me a Blood Vivicanti was everywhere. I was in his house. His name was Wyn.

I inhaled again. I realized more.

No, I wasn’t in his house. I was in his mansion. A great big mansion that seemed to go on forever, like a magic castle.

My clothes were gone. I was naked beneath the sheets. New clothes were laid out for me on the nearby table.

No one else was in the room.

I slipped from the bedclothes. The air was cold and fresh. Gave me goosebumps.

The luxury carpet was thick and soft. It felt good beneath my feet.

Folded neatly on the table were undergarments, a white t-shirt, a red V-neck sweater, and blue jeans. Snug shoes lay on the floor.

All my new clothes fit as though they had been tailored to my petite size.

The clothes had tiny rough filaments that only a Blood Vivicanti can feel. They scratched my skin, satisfying places I never knew had been itching for years.

My clothes smelled of fresh laundry. I love that scent too.

Yet their aroma was also the scent of direction. I could tell where they’d come from, how they’d been handled, the kind of people who’d touched them.

I opened my chamber door. I peeped through the crack.

The hallway was more ornate than my room. Empty too.

I crept from my room into the hallway. Like my room it too was carpeted in luxury. The hallway was lined with various chairs from various periods in history. French Revolution, Industrial Revolution, Computer Revolution.

On both sides of the hallway, soft cream-colored lights hung in sconces. On one side were marble statues of Christian saints and Greek gods. On the other side were suits of shiny armor standing in chivalrous formation. Small tables between them had flower heads floating in bowls of water. Computer panels were imbedded into the walls near doors that led into other rooms. All the other rooms were empty.

I had this wing all to myself.

I could smell Earl Gray tea steeping in a kitchen. The kitchen was a few stories below me.

At the end of the hallway was the master stairwell. It was white marble. Down the middle ran a long black rug.

My body moved nimbly now. My footfall hardly made a sound going down each step. I didn’t have to tiptoe, but I did anyway. I didn’t feel safe yet, like a cat left to her own devices. I was acting the way I once did in grade school: I was trying to go unnoticed.

Life had taught me thus far to avoid looking at my own power. So at that time I couldn’t see how powerful I’d become.

I could have slammed my foot down and shaken the stairwell with the force of an earthquake. Perhaps even shattered it to shards.

I must be careful how I walk.

The stairs ended in the main foyer. It was as ornate as the upper floors. It was as large as an ordinary house. The floor tile was a black and white checkerboard pattern. The walls had bright white wainscoting. The wallpaper above was rich red cloth. Along the walls were matching red sofas with ebony frames. A grandfather clock stood beside one sofa, ticking and tocking. A round marble table was in the center. On it stood an immense spray of sweet smelling orchids. The delicious scent made my head spin.

The aroma of the tea had moved. Now it was coming from an adjoining room. It was a library. Tall bookcases almost touched the high vaulted ceiling. Small staircases led to a platform halfway up. Books of all shapes and sizes and of all subjects filled each bookshelf. Their various colored spines painted the room like a rainbow.

One bookcase appeared to be missing a book. Only Blood Vivicanti eyes would have noticed the shape of its absence. Mine did.

Wyn was in the library. He was sitting in a comfortable leather chair. He was wearing another expensive suit. His dark hair was slicked back. A book was in his hands. He had been flipping through its pages fast, reading with superhuman speed, the way that I read books now that I am one of the most powerful creatures on the planet.

Noticing me enter, Wyn paused his reading. He watched me tiptoe inside. He didn’t say a word. He was observing me the way Darwin observed nature. Wyn wanted to know more about me. He wanted to see if I would survive for much longer. Maybe he thought I was endangered.

Wyn grinned. It made his brown eyes twinkle even more. Even though he was fortyish, he still had a boyish charm. His sonorous voice resounded in the library, a total contrast to the silence.

“You remember me,” he said. It wasn’t a question.

CHAPTER FIVE

Look for more

OTHER BOOKS BY BECKET

Key the Steampunk Vampire Girl and the Dungeon of Despair

Key the Steampunk Vampire Girl and the Tower Tomb of Time

The Christmas King

A preview of

KEY THE STEAMPUNK VAMPIRE GIRL

AND THE DUNGEON OF DESPAIR

— CHAPTER ONE —

Key

Key was a very beautiful girl with bright blue eyes and a mess of curly red hair that tangled out in all directions.

You might say she lived in the middle of nowhere because she did not have anything like the Internet or cable television or smart phones. But Key would say she lived in a large, beautiful valley with her mom and dad in a small house, with no one else around for miles and miles. Key’s mom was a shepherdess while her dad was a wheat farmer, so she spent many happy days running with sheep through tall fields of wheat, where the only apples she heard about only ever fell from trees and the only tablets she knew about were the two that Moses had.

Her dad taught her how to grow wheat, grind it into flour, and bake it into bread. She spent her summers helping him sell wheat and bread in the nearest village, where she quickly grew popular as a wonderful bread baker. Her reputation spread like wildfire, and many lords and senators would travel from all over the land just to taste a slice with butter.

At the same time, Key’s mom taught her how to shear sheep, dye wool, and weave it on a loom into blankets. She spent her winters helping her mom sell wool and blankets in that same village where, like her bread baking, her popularity also grew and soon everyone knew her not only as a baker, but also as a magnificent weaver of the thickest, warmest, snuggest blankets around. Many queens and presidents would travel from far away countries just to buy one – especially the ones with the red dots.

Key’s mom and dad were very proud of her.

Yet some days in the valley were very hard. One summer was so hot that the sun burned the wheat fields and one winter was so cold that a few sheep froze into blocks of ice. But Key did not mind the difficult times because her mom and dad taught her the meaning of the word perseverance. Although neither of them could tell her how to define the word according to a dictionary (because neither could afford to go to school), they showed her instead every day that perseverance means: Achieving your goal without surrendering to despair.

Key remembered this lesson, and all her parents’ lessons, every day of her life – until she turned nine years old.

Yes, Key’s ninth birthday was the worst day she’d ever had because it was the day on which she lost so much. How much? Well, she lost as much as any person can lose. And every night afterward, Key struggled to remember her parents’ lessons along with the meaning of the word perseverance.

Actually, the daytime of Key’s ninth birthday had been very lovely. The weather had been beautiful. The sky had been cloudless and blue, and the warm sun had shone brightly. Key had helped her mom sell all their wool blankets in the village right before she helped her dad sell all their loaves of bread. They had worked hard all day until sunset, and then they returned home, knowing that they had done good work.

They had a wonderful home. During the day it looked snug and comfortable. At night it looked warm and inviting. They never locked their doors or windows, but kept their house always open, welcoming anyone to freely come inside for a good, simple meal near a small, warm fire.

Oh, if only they had locked at least their front door when they got home that evening, then the awful thing that happened to Key might never have happened at all. But, alas, they didn’t lock the door – and double alas, the terrible thing did happen, which sent Key to a very horrible place called “Despair.”

The bad thing happened shortly after dinner.

Dinner had been delicious, by the way. Key told her mom and dad so, even though all they had to eat was bread and vegetable soup. That was all they could afford and they would never eat her mom’s sheep. Yes, she told them it was the best meal she’d ever had in nine years, and they laughed together, because they were a happy, joyous family.

Together they cleared the dinner plates from the table and set out dessert plates. Then her mom brought out a small cake; but no one would dare mention how the cake looked just a little too small for three people – no bigger than a cupcake really – with nine birthday candles clumped together on top.

Key loved her birthday cake. She made a wish and blew out her candles, although she didn’t wish for anything for herself. She didn’t want anything else. She felt she had everything she could ever want. Her only wish was for her mom and dad to be happy.

Then she received three presents – one from her mom, another from her dad, and one from them both. That was it. It was all she wanted. It was all she needed. She loved the meaning inside the gifts from her parents because they never bought gifts, and neither did Key. They couldn’t afford to. Instead they made all their gifts for one another by hand, which made the gifts richer than any apple and smarter than all the smart phones in the world.

The gift from her mom was a new crook for shepherding sheep, which she’d carved by hand from an old willow tree, yet she confessed that she had her doubts about the durability of willow wood. Key assured her mom that it was the gift she truly wanted, and she promised her that there was no finer gift in the world for a nine-year-old daughter – equal only to the gift that came next from her dad.

His gift was a saddle stone for grinding wheat grains into flour, which he’d carved out of gray-green marble. Key loved it also, telling him how marvelous it was by planting plenty of kisses all over his face.

Yes, indeed, this was quickly becoming the most amazing birthday she’d ever had.

But then she got the present from both her mom and dad. She was speechless when she saw that it was a beautiful white dress.

Her mom and dad had woven it together out of the softest linen. It was sleeveless and went down to her knees. She hugged the dress to her face and pressed it to her nose to smell its wonderful scent. She wished she could find the words to tell them how much she loved this gift, because to her it truly was the dress to end all other dresses in the whole world.

Both her mom and dad said she looked like a beautiful princess in it when she tried it on and stood before them, barefooted with yellow daisies woven through her hair, which she’d picked from a field earlier that day because she loved the way the daisies’ bright yellow petals looked like sunshine, and also because her mom and dad made her feel like the sunshine of their lives. They clapped for joy when she twirled around for them, with tears of gratitude filling her eyes and the hem of her dress flaring out like a budding flower.

Yes, most definitely, this had become the best birthday she’d ever had.

Key was just about to cut the cake for the three of them and hand it around, but right before that happy moment happened, the worst thing that could have happened finally did.

The unlocked front door swung open.

Standing in the doorway was a very big, very mean, and very angry vampire.

This vampire was called by many names. Some called him “Margrave the Gruesome.” Others called him “Margrave the Ghastly.” A few called him “Margrave the Grisly.” And one time someone called him “Margrave the Not-Too-Gabby,” but that someone met a gruesome, grisly, and ghastly end.

The legal name in the Society of Mystical Creatures for this nasty vampire was Margrave Bodkin Snick. He was popular like Key, but unlike her, his popularity had not come about because of anything good, but rather because of all the bad things he did. How bad were they? Well, I can’t go into the gory details, but they were the most horrible things you can think of. Treachery was child’s play to him. Burglary was kid’s stuff. He was mean, cruel, thoughtless, greedy, grumpy; and a bully, a snitch, a thief; and he was even a ruthless killer.

Yes, Margrave Snick hurt many people and many Mystical Creatures – and Key was the last person he hurt for a long time.

Now in her doorway, this menacing vampire stood panting with his black hair completely mussed, looking as though he had been running away from something quite painful and fearful. While he had somewhat handsome features such as a strong chin beneath two large cheekbones, along with skin as white as pure milk, his eyes were shifty and yellow – and they were now glaring venomously at Key.

So tall he had to stoop down beneath the doorframe, Margrave Snick strode into her home without so much as a How do you do.

Key’s dad stood up to greet him, but the vampire pushed him aside just as, following him through the front door, in came two zombies. They were Margrave Snick’s henchmen, and the only two survivors of his most recent zombicidal attack on the Society of Mystical Creatures. These two zombies were so thin and boney that, if their rotting skin hadn’t been black and blue, they might have easily been mistaken for skeletons.

“I’m starving!” one zombie henchman moaned.

“I haven’t eaten in weeks!” the other zombie henchman added, except his mouth was decaying so badly he spoke in unintelligible mumbles. What he said sounded more like, “Gurgle snurgle flursh shnuffles!”

Despite the absolute horror of this unexpected visit, Key’s mom and dad were very polite. They would not let anyone go away hungry. So they invited inside their home Margrave Snick and his two zombie henchmen because they always taught Key by example. And in this way she learned from them how to care for others, even for those who might hurt you.

Now, once the three guests were all inside, one of the zombie henchmen closed the front door behind him, and was the first one who ever locked it. The click that the door made when it locked sounded strange to Key, and she was not sure what it meant at first, not until she looked at Margrave Snick and saw the tall vampire flashing his long fangs and leering at her the way hungry wolves leer at helpless sheep.

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

BECKET

Becket has a BA in music composition, an MA in Systematic Theology, and an MS in Industrial/Organizational Psychology. He was a Benedictine monk for many years. For the last nine years, he has worked as Anne Rice’s assistant, and has spent that time learning from her.

He is also the author of Key the Steampunk Vampire Girl and the Dungeon of Despair.

You can find Becket at www.becket.me

ANNE RICE

Anne Rice has written over 30 books about vampires, werewolves and other such blood drinkers. Her works include Interview With the Vampire, The Vampire Lestat, and most recently The Wolves of Midwinter.

You can find Anne at www.annerice.com

CREDITS

Cover design

Becket www.becket.me

Cover photograph

File #18034003 © A-Digit | iStock

File #10210735 © Kathy Gold | Dreamstime.com

File #10210494 © Kathy Gold | Dreamstime.com

Author photo

Becket © 2013