It was a cool October morning, just before dawn when Max stumbled through the front door of his stylish loft. He looked at his surroundings through one bloodshot eye. His flat was a very comfortable, tastefully decorated with a defining masculine décor. Filled with antiques, priceless art and things he had collected through the years. Centuries afforded him the ability to live a very good life in a posh high-rise loft in the heart of the city. He felt safe and isolated, the kind of life he had become accustomed to.
A vampire's life can be very comfortable if he stays under the radar, invests his money wisely and waits for the economy to upswing. He was wise with his money and it had paid off handsomely.
That is the upside of living forever. The downside is, living forever.
Max had changed residences and identities many times in the last one hundred and forty years. The fortune he had acquired allowed him to travel at a moment's notice if necessary. He had untraceable bank accounts stashed all over the world.
An immortal man could live in comfort for eternity as long as he didn't live too extravagantly. Max had nice things, classy but never flashy. Flashy brought attention. That was never a good thing if you're a vampire trying to live undetected in a mortal world.
The one thing he held onto no matter what, was his name. Maxwell Albert Chatsworth had to change many things in his life but he treasured the name he was born with in London so many decades before. It gave him roots. His history was in his name.
He staggered over to the antique mirror that hung in the foyer and peered at his own image. All the nonsense written about vampire lore was rubbish. Of course he could be seen in a mirror. Cameras could capture his image too but he avoided them as much as possible. Bram Stoker had done all vampires a favor by putting out those false claims. It gave mortals comfort to think they could separate themselves from the undead. It gave them hope that they could identify and destroy vampires at will before those monsters tore into their throats and drained the life from their mortal bodies. It had to be unnerving to imagine the immortal undead walking freely among the vulnerable living. The hunters roaming freely among their food.
Vampires don't require food but they can get drunk and high too, just like Max was at this very moment. They had the added advantage of becoming intoxicated by an imbibed mortal's blood. They absorbed everything. Emotions, stimulants, depressants, you name it. Whatever a human can take or feel, a vampire can experience it. Tonight it was a bit of all those things. He'd spent the entire evening feeding off Timur's ladies. A bevy of beauties with daddy issues who sold their bodies as well as their blood to vampires for a lot of money.
There are many romantic myths about vampires, some of it was the truth and some of it pure hogwash. Vampires do fall in love. God knows Max did, hard. It could be with another vampire or the living mortal. Either way it can be dangerous, usually for the humans whom are often turned or die in the process. Vampires always want to win when they battle for dominance. It's their feral nature. Power and domination are generally determined by age not gender.
Vampire love can be brutal. In Max's case it was fatal for the woman who turned him. His beautiful immortal bride, in a fit of rage, he hurled her to her fiery demise. He didn't want to but she forced his hand. He often wondered if she let him win on purpose. She was nearly two hundred years older than he and more powerful. Guilianna was also miserable at living forever, even more so than Max. She was possessive, suspicious and angry about everything, especially when it came to Max. Her love for him was more of an obsession. It was deadly and destructive. She had always been overly dramatic, bordering on demonic, as long as Max had known her. He was attracted to her from the instant he looked into her dark eyes.
Max looked closely at his image. His face had not aged a single day in one hundred and forty-one years. He was still that handsome, charming Englishman from Victorian times. Still a healthy, thriving thirty-five year old ladies' man in the mirror. Inside his heart, he was older than time.
He met his fate of immortality at the hands of the most beautiful woman he had ever laid eyes on shortly after his thirty-fifth birthday. She was bewitching, bewildering and more addictive than anything he'd ever encountered in his short mortal life. Had he known his fate, he probably still would have allowed her to take it away from him. He would have given her everything, anything her cold dead heart wanted. All it took was one soul crushing encounter.
All these years and all the women he had known since, not one could ever compare to the breathtaking Guilianna DiGrazzi. She was the daughter of an Italian Count. The sultry seductress had captured his soul with one glance of those wickedly beautiful brown eyes. He surrendered to her and she took his life. She sunk her fangs into his throat one fateful night and he gave up his mortality while he whispered her name.
A gripping sadness overcame him as he turned his face away from the mirror. When he looked at his image, he saw her. He always saw her. The woman he loved more than anything was dead at his own hands. She drove him to madness.
He'd always assumed it would be she that would end his undead reign. He often hoped she would, but she refused to let go. Guilianna denied him his freedom, so he took hers. At the time it seemed to be the only way to bring some peace to both of their tortured souls.
Max looked toward the copper tiled ceiling as the ghosts began to do their haunted dance around his head. They always seemed to show up whenever he thought about his Guilianna.
Max tried to rub the swirling banshees from his eyes. Why did Timur allow his lovely whores to continually stay hopped up on cocaine and Qualudes. He could hear Timur's thick Russian accent in his head. "It's the eighties Max! All the beautiful people are doing it." Timur was his oldest friend, and by oldest he meant both figuratively and literally. The mad Russian, Timur Bogrov, was nearly a thousand years old. He was a mere boy when he was turned many centuries ago at the age of twenty-six. He looked and talked like a twenty something surfer dude and even more so, he acted like one. Timur was perpetual punk who preferred to be called "Tim". "Ah dude! The 'ludes make you feel laid back and the coke keeps you awake to enjoy the high."
All Max knew was, the Quaaludes made him do stupid things and the cocaine made him aware that he was doing them. It didn't matter anymore. He couldn't and wouldn't stay away from them; any will power he ever possessed was gone.
