I am Leslie Bane. Or at least, that is how you will always know me. I’ve had various names over the years, I was once called ‘Rose’ when I lived in France. That was fun, except when the dear Emperor Napoleon tried to round me up and lock me away for ‘dissidence’.
    I escaped into Spain, which wasn’t the best of ideas, but needless I had already made up my mind. I would move from my homeland, my wonderful France, and go to America.
    America was a big, brand spanking new baby of a country, and for the first time, it was a country that was born without a king! Can you even imagine that?
    It was freedom incarnate, or so everyone believed. America was that big chunk of wonderful and everyone was allowed to take a bite… or that’s what we were told.
    In reality, America was a big chuck of wonderful for everyone who had the money.
    I managed, after marring some old rich guy, to set myself up as a land owner and, yes I admit, I used slaves. I wasn’t proud of myself, after all, I’d lived long enough to see the pain and suffering that system caused. But it was the only way to recuperate my losses, plus, I must admit it gave me a good supply of blood to drink.
    Oh, I’m a vampire, did I mention that?
    Anyway, the people around the towns didn’t like me because I never went out in the day, but I made up some stuff about illness and they all bought it. Thank God for the Enlightenment and the bringing of this scientific age. People were far more willing to accept the excuses of science than go back to believing in ‘fairy tales’ like vampires and werewolves and other such creatures of the dark.
    I ‘died’ several times and was reborn each time as a family member, a cousin or an aunt, never a child. I was always, always careful to never to imply I had a husband, as I never wanted a lover whom I’d end up leaving behind when they died away.
    I’d made that mistake too many times in my long unlife. Loves die away, everything dies away with time, even I will.
    Of course I continued marrying, you had to in those days, but each of my husbands soon died of illnesses or ‘accidents’. The locals began to mutter about how my family was cursed, and once the local pastor took it upon himself to try and burn my house down. But he was swiftly dealt with, and besides, the civil war started up and all the able men ran out of town to go fight.
    I managed to survive that as well. You don’t live more than six hundred years and not learn to see a major change when it comes your way.
    Talking of changes, after more terrible wars changed the world I entered this state of being of which I’d never seen before, a Europe without kings, a new age of science and technology and, my favourite, electricity.
    Electricity changed my life… or unlife, whatever. Lights that emulated the day, not just like a flickering dot in the dark as candles used to give, but full continuous light! I could start to actually have a social life again as people began to go through odder, and far more wonderful, trends and fashions and going out at night to party and mix with random strangers actually became common place, well, it was now more open than it ever was before.
    I hated goth though, it was horrible and was as far off the mark of being a vampire as one could get but it was the only fashion I could stick with without having to hide my smile all the time.
    Still, the modern age is fantastic. I don’t have to pretend about anything anymore. I have a computer on which I can contact all other vampires across the planet, I have a wide screen TV and surround sound on which I can watch any sunrise and sunset I want.
    I even attend a school, since I can pull off being seventeen, hooray for never aging. It's fun being around kids my own age&#133... ok, being around kids that look my age, even though I have to act ‘goth’ to explain heavy clothing. Ugh, I once told a bunch of moronic ‘Wicca’s’ that I was an actual vampire and I proved it by baring my full fangs. I hoped to make them crap themselves and flee but they followed me about wanting me to give them ‘the gift’.
    Needless to say, I moved states.
    I have to apply sun block to my face and hands every few hours, but I get to write it off as a medical condition, again, hooray for science.
    And it was there that I met that young man, the one who impressed me. I’d sired more than one vampire in my time, mainly to make sure I could be protected when I slept, but as time went on I found that I needed to make less and less, especially when house prices went up.
    Just so you all know, there is no big horrible world controlling vampire order. There is no million year old Dracula figure sitting on some underground throne somewhere ordering all us other vamps about.
    There are some organisations, like the VSA (the Vampiric Society of America) which I suppose is like a secret society on account of no mortal knowing about them. They act as a sort of police force, protecting and serving… and killing if necessary, after all, we can’t have some loudmouth running around shouting out to the world that vampires exist, we could never risk another Jack the Ripper. They also protect, making sure to constantly issue us new identities whenever we need them and making sure that we’re, you know, not slaughtered en mass by the general vampire-fearing population.
    It consists of vampire hackers with no lives and big sexy muscle-y dudes who enforce the ‘no blabbing’ rule.  
    Although, yes, it’s true we do control all the worlds blood banks… well most of them anyway. How else are we going to get out blood without killing people? It’s not like the old days were you could just drop a few people a week and no one would care, this is an age were a murder doesn’t go unnoticed.
    How ironic, vampires controlling humanitarian efforts like blood drives.
    Wait, I’m rambling on again, sorry.
    Back to the cute boy. Yes he was cute, he had that whole ‘shy but handsome if he’d stop looking at his feet and putting his hood up’ thing going on. Not to mention, the moment I talked to him I found that he was actually very intelligent. Not just in a school sense, but in a world sense. It was clear that he was born a human, but he’d die to be a vampire.
    Heh, I’m so great at sayings.
    Anyway, he was one of those people that had that odd ability to stand back and view things, not just as they were at that time, but as a whole in the history of things. He knew his place was small and things moved on, and thus, it made him the perfect candidate for siring. Plus, my last adept had long flown the coop, some twenty years ago, and I was growing lonely.
    Yes, vampires grow lonely. We may be blood drinking blasphemies of nature, but we still have feelings, just like everything else in the universe.
    So I came to him, I offered him the chance to become a vampire. I stressed neither the good nor bad points of the deal. I told him he can walk away as he wishes, just don’t tell anyone. I told him what he’d have to give up, what he’d get in return, what he’d develop and lose as time went on.
    And, after he spent an hour thinking it over, he accepted.
    I was glad as well; I was getting bored of waiting.
    So, what now? Well, oddly enough, I take each day at a time. I rarely plan ahead to be honest, since so many things like that tend to fall apart. Odd for someone who’s over six hundred years old, right?
    People tend to think of vampires like we’re smart and witty and all that but every vampire I know hasn’t changed since they first got bitten. Marcus De Gravoin, aka, Mark Degar, is still a horny, foolish, egotistical asshole. Frances LeVerser is still a silly, childish, sweet girl who’ll do anything for you if you’re a friend. They’ve all become better at planning things of course, they’re all a little paranoid, as all vampires tend to be and they’ve all changed to get to know the fashions and the lingo of the day, but essentially, they’re the same person as they always were.  
    Times change, people don’t.
    I wonder what this kid will be like in another hundred years, what he’ll see when others don’t, who he’ll bite and love and hate and save.
    As always, I look forward to knowing.