That I am the Queen of Sheba is merely idiomatic. Ergo, "If so-and-so is Napoleon Bonaparte, then I am the Queen of Sheba." Or, "If this is really tomato juice, then I am Marie Antoinette." Or, better yet, "The new American President says his tax cuts will benefit the middle class and not just the rich. And I am the Shah of Iran."

In the case in point, if Ilona Darvasti is a "Mutant," then I am the Queen of Sheba. And I am quite certain I am not the Queen of Sheba. Yet nor do I mean to infer that Ilona Darvasti is anything other than a comely girl from Romania of whom it seems impossible to take a photograph. Yet she appears in real life, or so seems to appear. I believe there is an explanation for this.We know that Vampires are perfectly capable of having their photographs taken. Here is mine. To say otherwise is the usual Halloween nonsense. Many a Vampire has been a Scholar and a Gentleman and been photographed as and among the same.

Why, look at old Ilehu Ballou, "The Bloodhound of Baltimore," and a respectable purveyor of camera portraits in that city a century and a half ago. No one suspected that this obsequious shutterbug in a bow-tie was also exsanguinating the sons and daughters of Baltimore. His profession gave him plausible cause to be indoors and in the dark all day long and for years on end. What he did at night was his own business, so everyone thought.

Old Ilehu published photographs of himself, and he can be seen in sundry pictures of Baltimore society of the time. Indeed had he not been photographed, one might not have been able to spot him years later in western Pennsylvania, where in 1869 – the year after you were born in Ireland, Mordi – the oldest Vampire on the American Continent at that time was hunted down and staked to the front of a Hex Barn. Under a full and silver Moon they shot him point blank with eight barrels of silver Buckshot. Veritable Bullion they plough into old Ballou. It is said that in that moment his mouth was an agape and screeching pit from which his dentition jutted full out – a rabid frothy red and lupine phalanx of bone.

Alas, a photographer was not at hand. But that was old Ilehu, Pioneering Photographer and Venerable Vampire. He arrived on these shores in the early 17th century, as I did. But while I was a Mortal Infant born at Sea and hurled upon the New World there to dwell in Abounding Grace or Penal Fire and the case may be, Illehu Ballou was already a hematophagous old cretin of a hundred years of age.

So much for Vampires and Photography. The simple fact is that for a Vampire to be perceived in the first place, by camera or the naked eye, is a matter of skill and art on the part of the Vampire. To be seen is for us a conscious act, where for human beings it is so instinctive it is not even really considered an act. Betimes we Vampires forget to make ourselves apparent; and as long as there was no such thing as a camera in the world, no one was the wiser for it. Or if they were, they were considered mad. But things have changed, thanks in part to old Ilehu.

In any case, Ilona Darvasti does not appear in photographs. A pity, since she is stunning. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, as our Hoar of Ages well knows. But if translucent skin and blue lips and bone-straight hair of raven black is to your liking, as it is to mine, then Ilona is beautiful. "The eel" they call her, in the spirit of this Meretricious Fashion for "Mutants."

Mordi, you were "praying for the return of my sanity," and it has returned. No, Ilona is not a "Mutant" and nor is she a Vampire. I suspect, though, that she may be a Succubus, or some similar subspecies of Imp or Bugaboo or Nefarious Naiad of some sort.

Withal, she walks in the company of the Avuncular Croat, that unctuous fellow in his black turtlenecks and his waxed bald head and his pungent colognes and his "Collection" of "Beautiful Creatures" the lot of which has squatted our Maiden Lane digs with such impunity. And I am tired of them all. Gothic Lowbrows all – pretentious, superstitious, gawking juvenilia – all twelve of them.

Eleven, actually. I have performed a phlebotomy on one of them. Ah yes, Mordi, and a divine venesection it was. But I shall get to that in a moment, for it was not quite as you might imagine. Mordi, we must clear the air of certain nonsense about Vampires and how we drink.

I am fed up with the Hatch and Brood of Time, Mordi. I have thrown away my cloak and my opera hat, my spats and walking stick, sold my Victorian furniture and my Federalist bric-a-brac. I am done with the past. I am done with being the walking relic and the anemic bugaboo of the moving pictures. I have assumed an epicene and nearly aquatic style of dress. I walk in the Sunlight, Mordi! That’s right – in the Broad Light of Day, in the Blue of Noon, but in a motorcycle helmet and a silver jumpsuit to protect me from that Infernal Star. And nobody bats an eye. And I, Mordi, aspire to the Apogee of Modernity. I, Casper Freake – so old and yet so new.

I told you of the "New Light in the World" that hounds me: the Unearthly Light that is like Sunlight but is not, and so drives one mad but spares one’s life. And you attributed this "Nauseous Sunlight" to insanity or thirst. It is neither and nothing of the kind. In the months since we last corresponded, I have come to adore this Light. It was only a matter of getting used to it. It has awakened me.

I have abandoned Maiden Lane to the Croat and his rabble, and have rented a Great White Box of a flat in an industrial part of the City called Soho, which was recently discovered by Artists and transformed into a kind of Arcade for the viewing of Pictures. So it is now as genteel and tolerable a quarter as any. Only yesterday it seems this quarter was full of the clang of machines.

My new "Loft," as they call these places now, has been decorated in a spare and Japanese fashion. And the place is brightly lit by fluorescent bulbs that approximate Sunlight in all respects except one – it is not Sunlight.

To here I drew an androgynous creature of the Croat’s brood and feasted on it. I believe it must once have been male, for it was large, but hairless and delicious. And all this in Broad "Daylight," and with Savage Abandon. An out-and-out and bare-limbed brawl it was; no skulking lecherous affair at all. Why, I tackled the creature full body, like a wolf on prey, and plunged my face right into its soft inner thigh, high near the loins, yes, and quick to the Sciatic Artery, that succulent tributary of the Iliac. For this is Ilyria! Or it is the Rich Basin of the Danube. But it is, as far as I am concerned, the only place to bite and suck your prey. And it died in ecstasy..

Rather, it almost died, but did not.

It has become much more difficult to murder someone in New York than it was a hundred years ago. There is no place to dump a body anymore. Even the nearby City of Brooklyn, which the Dead know so well, is out of bounds in this regard. The waterfront there – where once I tossed the riff-raff and washerwomen of the Lower East Side like so many husks and shells on a Fortnightly Feast – has now become a regular Riviera of Hobnobbing Gentility. And they don’t even make a good Bloody Mary. Where on earth is a man to drink today!

As you know, Mordi, during the Black Plague in Europe – not so long ago, really – human beings were in short supply. Those that lived were barely alive, and scant few were clean and healthy. Certain Vampires of noble means and delicate taste took to drinking repeatedly from one or a few rare and healthy specimens. These they jealously guarded in their castles, as pampered and well-fed guests. And grateful were these "guests" to be safe from the Pestilence and Famine that ravaged the countryside. The price they paid for food and safety was … dizzying … to be sure, but only occasional.

During that Drought, the wise Vampire learned the art of "Sanguinis Interruptus," wherein all but the Last Mortal Gulp of Life is extracted, and the Victim is later revived and fattened up to quench a later Thirst. But this requires nearly inhuman discipline of the Vampire. For nothing, Mordi – and you know this better than anyone – nothing is more pleasurable on this earth than to drink a Sentient Thing dead. But if Death be not expedient, the next best thing is to drink a Sentient Thing almost dead.

It was three throbs from the brink of Eternity that I brought my lithe Androgyn. Ah, but at that point I withdrew the Dogtooth. I resisted the Sapid Ecstasy! The bittersweet twist at the end of Life that sooths Epiglottis. I then inserted a Catheter into the supine Hermaphrodite. I bound its long legs and arms to a table with straps of black rubber. I clipped its nipples to an Electrometer, and I hooked up a Cardiograph. Gingerly I coaxed its dwindling pulse further toward the End of Time. I brought this She-Man, I tell you, to within a ripple of a flat line. I watched its Attic Limbs succumb to the whiteness of marble. And all this I did in a cold sweat, Mordi! These hematological procedures I performed in the Grip of Sanguinary Lust. Yet I  forbore to despoil and blot the creature there and then, but took solace from the Catheter as it snaked out a scarlet rope of elixir.

And I took my drink in the New England style, with vodka, in a tall glass, with a twist of lemon and a dash of pepper, tobasco sauce, a sprig of celery, and a bit of horseradish.

My Dwarf, Albrecht, who is my valet and my chauffeur and whom you shall meet in time, is nursing the epicene Creature back to some semblance of life. He sits now on its chest like the Imp of Time, and the Creature moans and tosses in the febrile machinations of its delirium. Albrecht is trying to feed it spinach – iron to bring back the Blood.

And as I write you, Mordi, at this very moment, I am looking -- would you believe it -- directly at the Sun. This possibility is owing to my window pane, which is a costly affair made of thinly sliced translucent Bloodstone. Through this I can gaze at the Infernal Star, for it filters out the ultra violet rays and most of the color spectrum. And what I have before me is a Black Sunset at the end of Spring Street. And there, beyond the East River, the New Jersey skyline is ablaze in a bluish fire. At the end of the day, the world is ablaze in a kind of heliotropic ecstasy. What an extraordinary thing is this World of the Sun. What an amazing invention the Catheter is. And what, I wonder, is Mordi up to.

Eternally, Casper Freake.

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