You are a young Vampire, you who have known fewer than two Centuries and barely a Fortnight of a third. I am Three-Hundred Three-Score and Seven years a Vampire, Mordi. And I was already Four and Thirty on that fateful night in New York Harbour so long ago when I fell to the tooth of Nubian and was thus Transmuted. You, alas, Mordi, were a Boy of Seven and Twenty when you were bitten.

I am the older Vampire of us two, but I was not born, as you were, Mordi, to the Brethren. No Salient Tooth is in my Pedigree, no Ferret-Mangling Uncles nor Gypsy Forebears. ‘Ere that I am in one respect your Elder Brother in this Peculiar Vein of existence that we share, seemingly with no others, yet it is thee, Mordi, who art the proper Heir to the Lineage. Long to this Guild though I am, remember that I was first an Ordinary Englishman, who became a Vampire, who became an American.

My Parents were the mere God Fearing Christian Yoemanry of dampest Sussex, too pious even for Rome, and too righteous for England, and therefore tossed upon the New World, where to dwell in Abounding Grace or Penal Fire as the case may be, but there to dwell. Such Inauguration as I had into the Transylvanian Order had naught to do with Kith or Kin or Place of Origin, but with Fortune and with her alone. Oh Fortuna, Velut Luna, Statu Variabilis, and All That.

And there you are, Mordi, feasting on the Besotted Youth of Dublin’s Iniquity, you Chowhound you. I haven’t thirsted like that since the Eighteenth Century. But Thirst I still do, and how. Yet it is a Strange New Thirst that desiccates me now, Mordi. A thirst I’ve not known in all my Nocturnal Centuries. A Thirst, Mordi, that asks the very Question: What is this Vampiring all about anyway. Yes yes, I know, Wisdom comes with Waiting, and in Waiting is very Wisdom. Obumbrata et Velata. And so on. We’ve heard it all a hundred times. But I awoke, Mordi, I awoke in such a state one night not long ago, that confounded my very blood.

T’were as if Sunshine were drenching me, except it wasn’t Sunshine of course or I’d have been in Mortal Agony, as you well know, and yet I wasn’t. When I was in the Navy, hundreds of years ago, a Sailor who had lost his Leg in battle told me once that he was betimes visited by a Phantom Feeling of having again the missing Leg, and of awakening at night even to hold it, so surely Present did it feel, yeah only to find the leg gone as ever it could be. The Light that awoke me was something like that – an abominable Sunlight, yet bereft of that lethal effect that the Sun has on Persons such as us. Nor yet was it the Light of any Whale Oil or Electrik Orb that I have ever seen. It drove me half mad, it did, but did not destroy me, yet upended my Mind.I told you in my last letter about the Precocious Young Rakes and Dames who have Absconded with our Peace and Quiet on the Great Abandoned Floor of the Sky-Scraper on Maiden Lane. These Youth exist, I believe, subsist perhaps, in just this Pellucid Light that I have spoken just now of, and of which I know not yet what to make of. But sure, Mordi, there is a Brave New Light in the World.
 

Withal, I said I would either avoid our Intruders and dispatch with them later and all at once and Savagely at that, or, more to Discretion, blend in with them and pick them off quietly one by one. And as you might have guessed I’ve taken the latter and more Gentlemanly and subtle Course of Action. To begin with, their Benefactor is an avuncular Croat of middle years and bald and shiny pate who fancies leather shirts and pungent colognes. At long I thought he might be on to me, so queerly did he regard me. But it is not of being a Vampire that he suspects me. Indeed I doubt the Idea is anywhere near his Mind. That is to say he is the Type who would Laugh most fulsomely at the Word "Wampyre." Durst I tell him the Truth about myself, he would certainly peg me for some Gothic Lowbrow.

What he did ask me, most cagily, and only after a week of Whisky and Rum and Infernal Lounging atop the Skyline of Lower Manhattan, was if I was a "Mutant." He inferred that such are among his protegees here. But he is so Oblique, and his way of speaking so consummately Modern, that I cannot catch his Meaning. Ne’retheless, with the wink of a livery eyelid, he indicated one Creature, at least, whom I suspect of being, well, not quite human.

She is a Lass of Swanish Grace and Delicate Neck, and so pale, so translucently so, that myriad little blue capillaries are visible in her skin, and with Hair as straight and black as a Bat’s wing, and as smooth and lustrous as the fur of a Rabid Mink, and, to top it all, she has eyes of most incongruous azure.

Her name is Ilona Darvasti and she comes from the city of Morosvåsarhely, in Hungary, but in a region that was once Rumanian, and that lies smack in the middle of the verdant basin of the Danube, bounded by the Carpathian Mountains, and is sometimes called the Principality of Transylvania.

Forthwith, Mordi, and herein, I send Daguerreotypes. Pictures of our "Guests" at the Floor. The one dressed as a Harlot is, I am told, really a Man. And as you may have guessed, indeed, I exposed a Picture of Mlle. Darvasti as well. I confess it was to my None Too Great Surprise, Mordi, that neither her Effigy nor any semblance of her whatever appeared in the developed picture, much as I can vouch that the Lens was pointed perfectly at her. Withal, Mordi, it seems we may not be alone after all. For if this Ilona Darvasti is a "Mutant," then I, dear Mordi, am the Queen of Sheba.

Everlastingly, Casper

Casper Freake, New York, New York. 17 March 2001