By Blood We Live

We'd hunted the night before, close to sunrise. I'd killed twice. I knew it was going to be a long voyage. Seven or eight days, from Cherbourg to New York. A span of time that bordered on dangerous, for such as we.

I hoped I wasn't one of those vampires who turn crazy after four or five days without a kill-who are so addicted to the pleasure of the death, as well as to its simple nourishment-that they hunt under conditions which are sure to bring them to the attention of authorities: for instance, among a limited and closely watched group of people. But quite frankly, I didn't know. Without a kill every few days, we start to lose our ability to deceive and ensorcel the minds of the living, a situation I had never permitted to occur.

This was the first time in a hundred and forty years that I'd traveled very far from London. The first time since I had become vampire in 1772 that I had crossed the ocean.

When the UnDead travel, they are horribly vulnerable. Money has always provided some protection in the form of bribes, patent locks, servants, and social pressure (Why do you think it's always Evil Lord So-and-So in the pe

"There's a new world across the ocean, Simon," I said, making my voice grave. "Face it, Europe ca

Ninety-five hours later I was kicking myself for those words, but who knew?

Simon smiled, something he rarely does. "Perhaps you are correct, my friend. Be that so, I trust you will act in the nature of a scout, and send me word of the promised land. Now go, if not with God, at least with the blessing of an indifferent Fate, my Evil Lord…" He checked my papers for the name: "…Lord Sandridge." He put on his black-tinted spectacles and accompanied me to the barrier, where he added the subtle influence of his mind to mine in the task of getting my luggage through unchecked. I ascended the gangway, and from the rail saw him wave, a slim small form in dark gray, perhaps my only friend among the UnDead.

We are not, you understand, particularly pleasant company, even for one another.

Then I went down to the first-class luggage hold to make sure my coffin-trunk was both accessible and inconspicuous. Simon, I presume, returned home and slaughtered some unsuspecting immigrant en route for breakfast.

We put in at Queenstown on the Irish coast in the morning, before our final embarkation over the deep. It's always a damnable struggle to remain awake in one's coffin for even a short time after the sun is in the sky, but I was determined to make the effort, and it's a good thing I did. Shortly after I'd locked myself in for the day-we were still several hours from Queenstown at that point-I heard stealthy steps on the deck, and smelled the stink of a man's nervous sweat.

Of course someone had noticed the obsessive care I'd taken in bestowing my trunk, and had drawn the usual stupid conclusion that the living are prone to. Greedy sods. Skeleton keys rattled close to my head. I forced down both grogginess and the quick flash of panic in my breast-the hold was absolutely sheltered from any chance of penetration by sunlight-and fought to accumulate enough energy to act.

Get away from here, you stupid bastard! The living have no idea how commanding are the rhythms of vampire flesh; I felt as I had when in mortal life I'd gotten myself sodden-drunk on opium at the Hellfire Club. This ship stinks with American millionaires and you're trying to rob the trunk of a mere Evil Lord?

The outer lid opened, then the i

I heaved myself up with what I hoped was a terrifying roar, wrenched the skeleton keys out of the young man's hand, and dropped back into the coffin, hauling the lid down after me and slamming shut its i

I understand he abandoned ship at Queenstown and thus missed all subsequent events. A pity. Drowning was too good for the little swine.

It wasn't fear of robbery, however, that made me struggle to remain awake through the boarding-process at Queenstown, listening with a vampire's preternatural senses to every sound, every voice, every footfall in the ship around me. I had to know who was getting on the ship.

Because of course I had not been completely truthful with Simon as to my reasons for leaving England, or for embarking at Cherbourg for that matter. One never likes to admit when one has made a very foolish mistake.

Which brings me to the subject of Miss Alexandra Paxton.

I don't know under what name she boarded the

Titanic. She knew, you see, that I'd be keeping an eye on the passenger lists, and would have changed my own travel plans had I suspected she was on board.

It is another truism of the more puerile examples of horror fiction that the victims of Evil Lord So-and-So or the wicked Countess Blankovsky are generally of the upper, or at worst the professional, classes. This is sheer foolishness, for these people keep track of one another, particularly in a small country like England. (Another motive for choosing America.)

Vampires for the most part live on the poor. We kill people whom no one will miss. Regrettably, these people tend to be dirty, smelly, undernourished, frequently gin-soaked, and conversationally uninteresting. And we

do enjoy the chase, the cat-and-mouse game: the long slow luring, for days and weeks at a time.

Which is how I'd happened to meet, and court, and flirt with, and take to the opera, and eventually kill Miss Cynthia Engle, only a few days before she was to have wed Lionel Paxton.

Lionel and his sister had sounded like a remarkably boring pair when Miss Engle had told me about them at our clandestine meetings, edged with danger and champagne. I hadn't allowed for my lovely victim's craving for the melodramatic, which discounted her suitor's native shrewdness. In any case, after a train of events too complicated and messy to go into, I had been obliged to kill Lionel as well.

Alexandra had been dogging me ever since.

She came aboard at Queenstown, at the last possible moment. This was an u

And my heart sank.

There was no way I could kill her on board the

Titanic without causing a tremendous fuss and possibly being locked in a cabin which might contain a window, which really would give the good Captain Smith something to write about in his log.

But

her goal, on the other hand, was not survival. I knew from a previous encounter that she wore about her neck and wrists silver chains that would effectively sear my flesh should I come in contact with them, and carried a revolver loaded with silver bullets which she would not have the slightest hesitation about firing.

I also knew she was an extremely accurate shot.

I can't tell you exactly how the UnDead know when it's safe to emerge from their hiding-places. There are those of us who can step forth in lingering Nordic twilights with no more than frantic itching of the skin and a sense of intolerable panic, others whose flesh will auto-combust while the last morning stars are still visible in the sky. Our instinct in this matter is very strong, however-and those of us who lack it generally don't remain vampires very long.