Alexander-Fyn-Sanguinarian

upright and took her hands in his. “Rumours abound,” she went on. “Stories of horror and blood.
    Tales of madness. Are they true, even in part?”
    “My sister is quite mad. Yet I love her and I must protect her.”
    “Yes, you must. But I want to know how these stories of mayhem and murder came about. Tales of vampires and werewolves and such like.”
    “Mayhem and murder?” Raven repeated and laughed. “People say all sorts of things. There is no one in my family who is, or was, a murderer, at least not that I know of.”

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    “Are you a vampire, truly?” Evangeline bit her lip, afraid of the answer, yet insisting on knowing. “I feel I have a right to know after all I have been through with you.”
    “Perhaps you do.” His eyes were gentle. “Though I would ask you not to carry tales away with you. I do not want angry mobs descending on my castle. My people have been persecuted enough already.”
    “Are you a vampire, my lord?” Evangeline repeated, watching his face carefully for any sign that he might lie or avoid her question.
    “Yes,” he whispered. “I am sanguinarian.”
    “What does that mean?”
    “Sanguinarian means blood drinker. I am a blood drinker.”
    There was a moment of complete silence before she whispered,
    “You drink the blood of others?” A spark of fear ignited within her.
    She wanted to withdraw her hands, at the same time she wanted him to tell her more.
    “Only when it is freely given, but yes, I drink the blood of others.”
    “Why?” she breathed. “What would possess you? What sort of strange compulsion is this?”
    Raven spoke slowly and evenly. “If I do not consume blood, then I become very ill. If I went without for too long, I would die.”
    “Why? I do not understand this.” Her brow furrowed in confusion, but she fought to keep disgust from her face.
    “Why do you want to walk about in bright sunlight? Why do you insist on eating noxious foods? Why do you not drink blood?” he asked simply.
    “It is not natural.” She was growing hot and agitated. “We are human beings, not animals. People don’t drink blood.”
    “Do animals drink blood?” Raven asked. He was growing hot-tempered again, though his colour never rose as hers did. “Animals do not consume blood, vampires do. Sanguinarian people do. We need blood just as you need food.”
    Evangeline drew a long breath, trying desperately to understand.

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    “Then you are immortal? Do you sleep in a coffin?”
    “You have seen where I sleep.” He sounded impatient now. “I sleep in a bed. I like to move around when I sleep, a coffin would confine me. Coffin indeed! As for being immortal, I am no more so than you. I will die when my time comes, though we tend to live for a long time. Accidents kill us, as does murder. Where do you think my ancestors are, living in all the empty rooms in the castle?”
    “Were they vampires?” she asked. “Your parents?”
    “Of course they were, most of the Ravenscrofts were and are today.”
    It was all beginning to sink in. “Then it is an inherited trait, passed on by birth from parent to child?”
    “Yes.”
    “And Dominica?” she asked.
    “Yes, though not quite in the same way. We are all very different in our needs, just as your people are. She drinks blood, but rarely. She needs it, but not to the same degree that I do. She feeds me.”
    “Feeds you how?”
    “She allows me to drink blood from her. She herself gets her life energy from those around her, servants, those who take care of her.
    She feeds upon their prana, their life force, yet she is able to give to me.”
    “I don’t understand any of this,” Evangeline said. She was beginning to be sorry she had asked. “I’m not sure I want to.”
    Raven looked away. “I am beginning to think I should not have told you.”
    “Tell me this then, my lord. Why do people say that vampires live forever, that they lure young girls and make them into vampires by embracing them?”
    “There are some vampires who are called Immortals. They are a separate race from my kind. I have never met an Immortal. I know nothing of their ways, but they do exist. They live eternally unless something dire interferes with them and I believe that they can 190
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    transform others. My kind are sanguinarian.”
    “So sanguinarians don’t make people into vampires by drinking their blood?”
    “No. We give birth to little vampires just as your people give