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MATING HABITS OF THE COMMON VAMPIRE
His house was interesting, his books and pictures confir desk piled with volumes, many with places marked His interests were eclectic; currently, he was absorbed by A Modern Apostle, and Other Poems by Constance Naden, After London by Richard Jefferies, The True History of the World by Lucian de Terre, Essays on the Endowment of Education by Mark Pattison, Science of Ethics by Leslie Stephen and The Unseen Universe by Peter Guthrie Tait Araphs of Pa-faced woman with a pre-Raphaelite cloud of hair In pictures, Charles&039;s as always frozen in sunlight, at ease in her stillness while others in her group posed stiffly
She found pen and ink on a stand and considered leaving a note With the pen in her hand, she could not think of anything she needed to say Charles would wake up and find her gone but she had no excuses tobound by duty Finally she just wrote that she would be at the Hall this evening She assumed he&039;d return to Whitechapel and that he would look in on her Then they ned the note, &039;love, Genevieve&039;, the accent a tiny flick above her flowing signature Love was all very well; it was the talking about it that enervated her
On the third atte to take an unescorted vaht not be outside the Four-Mile Radius, that arbitrary circle beyond which hansoed to venture, but cabbies often had to be overpaid to discharge duties which lay in that Easterly direction
En route, lulled by the gentle trundle of the wheels and her sense of satisfied repletion, she tried not to think about Charles and the future By now she had suffered enough involveether Charles was in his ed In five or ten years, she would seehter In thirty or forty, he would be dead; especially if she continued to feed off him Like many vampires, she had, with the insistent complicity of her victims, destroyed those about whom she cared deeply An alternative would be to turn him; as his mother-in-darkness, she would nurture hi him to the wider world as all parents must lose their children
They crossed the river And the city became noisier, more cramped, more populated
There were vaht theether, they tended tooff each other so inal individualities If anything, their reputation for extreme cruelty and ruthlessness orse than that of the worst of the un-dead outlaws
It was a cold, drabThey ell into Noveht, neitherwas so thick that the sun did not penetrate down to the streets The cab ress
This tier secret things She and Charles would not be unique, hardly even out of the ordinary Their little loveout in a thousand variations up and down the country Vlad Tepes had not bothered to think through the implications of his rise to power Alexander-like, he cut the knot; loose ends fell where they ement
Last night, with Charles, it had beenDespite her worries, she remained elated by his blood She could still taste him, still feel him inside
The cabby opened his trap and told her they were in Commercial Street