Caelum
I fed at dusk.
Not directly. After four hundred years I no longer found it appealing to take my sustenance straight from the vein. It was messy, emotional, sensual, and difficult to control. I preferred the more civilised approach — fresh volunteer donor blood in a crystal goblet.
I wasn’t feeding out of need, either. I could go considerably longer than a single day without feeding. Weeks, even months if I chose to, and I often did. But tonight I fed deliberately. The sweet, coppery blood settled the restlessness that had been building in me since the announcement. It soothed the edge that had nothing to do with hunger and everything to do with a kiss in a dark corridor.
It had everything to do with the way Miss Magdalene had walked away with the unhurried step of a woman who ha
