March 1, 1919

Patrick sat and watched Alice go about her day. Get up, walk around the room, sit down at her writing desk and write in the journal Cynthia had given her as a gift, then sit down on the edge of her bed and think.

Patrick wasn’t sure what it was about Alice that intrigued him. Was it her sense of naivety? Her attitude about life? About people?

Nothing seemed to fit in the right place with Alice and that fascinated him beyond any mental capacity of his kind. His kind. His kind were an ancient predator, forced out of the gates of Heaven, bound to Earth for all of eternity, forced to retreat to the lowest form of killing ever idealized: cannibalism. It wasn’t so much cannibalism, when you thought hard enough about it. They really only fed on the blood of the human being. But even the thought that he had to be so dependant on something that he once frowned upon with such contempt… well it seemed the feeling couldn’t get any worse.

He remembered his perfect life in the 1600s. How his father had always been both concerned and free-spirited at the same time. He had always joked that he was the noblest contradiction in history. Patrick missed his father, his criticism and praise, his love and his hate. That was another remarkable feature of his father’s: passion. Oh, how his father had passion! He would always tell Patrick to trust in God and his family and that that was the key to a happy life.

That was how Patrick had died, trusting.

It had been a cold night, Patrick could barely recall the memory into existence, but he did it. The reverie was clouded, as if a veil were hiding his human experiences from him, forcing new ones to take place. But Patrick pulled all of his effort to remember the night that he went out with his best friends to hunt the group of suspected vampires in their part of the country. Now, they weren’t just hunting vampires per say, they were hunting any devil-worshipping creature, and the man they had elected as their group leader was said to be wonderful at finding and condemning the right men and women. Carlisle Cullen, they said was his name. His father had been a widely talked minister, thus giving young Carlisle status and credit amongst the Church community.

Carlisle – a particularly handsome man, with sleek gold hair and a subtly muscular frame – was at the head, leading the party slowly through the streets of London. He didn’t come across as a very active man to Patrick. He had a consigned look to his face and he seemed startlingly at peace, as if they were hunting deer instead of the very creatures God, Himself, had damned.

Suddenly, Carlisle stopped dead, peering low into a sewer. He spoke in a melodic tone that probably had the ladies swooning wherever he went. He said, “Come out demons, we will not harm you. We wish only to make a bargain.”

Patrick had been stunned. Why would he want to make a bargain with the devil’s servants? They must be killed and quickly!

Almost as if in response to his thoughts, a high pitched screeching sound came from within the sewer. Within a second, Carlisle was pinned to the ground, crying out in pain. Patrick grabbed a hold of the monster and yanked with all his might, but the creature didn’t budge. Suddenly, without warning, something else was piercing his neck, quite painfully. That was the one memory, the very last one when he was completely human, that he reminisced quite vividly: the sheer and utterly horrible pain that started at his neck and burned all the way through his body like wildfire. It paralyzed him and he sank quickly, willingly, into unconsciousness, though the pain did anything but subside.

He had simply to lie there, writhing and thrashing in utter agony until the pain finally, but alas slowly, began to wane. He had risen, full of hunger (or thirst rather), one of the damned beasts he had solemnly promised his father he would defeat. Now he was one of them.

He gradually built up his strength, what else was there to do when your life had ended, but you were sentenced to a living hell? He figured that he may as well make the best of it.

And so here he was, just over 300 years later, watching a girl, for the first time, in a way he never thought possible. And she wasn’t looking back.