When I arrived at the bridge, I parked my car in the small car park and headed for the high iron railing.
Whatever superstitious people might say, the Nusle Bridge was a work of art, filled with a special atmosphere of moral freedom and reflection on the mortality of life. Admiring the heavy clouds flying above me, the colour of a stormy sea, with thin veins of grey threads cutting through them, I thought a great deal. There were a few people on the bridge besides me, but they were just curious tourists, seduced by the bridge's terrible beauty. Banal: they would take pictures as a souvenir and soon leave, unable to withstand the aura of hundreds of suicides.
And so it happened, but my mind was visited by an unpleasant reminder of the beginning of the mid-term autumn exams, for which I had no point in preparing. I knew I would pass all the exams, after all, I had covered this material many times before. As I mentioned above, I have had the honour of studying at all American, Canadian and European universities, including Prague University, where I am studying again. I have studied here three times, in different eras, under different names, naturally without drawing undue attention to my identity.
Darkness descended on Prague. The city was lit up with thousands of multi-coloured lights and filled with the hum of evening fun. People got their long-awaited rest. What did that bode for me? I had only eaten two days ago, so I wasn't hungry, but Markus was out hunting tonight. Let him have his fun, perhaps even paired with the lady of his heart.
I leaned against the railing, closed my eyes, and stayed that way until I caught something unusual in the air that made me forget my thoughts and look in the direction the wind had brought me: a girl standing about fifty metres away. I couldn't have been mistaken, because a vampire's gaze was much more distinct than a human's. And despite the thickening darkness, I stared openly at the stranger.
The scent of her blood intoxicated me. This bouquet, never before heard by me, struck me with its beauty. The scent of fresh young human blood, filled with a touch of sea breeze and tart sweetness. To savour it, I breathed often and deeply, and my mind was involuntarily filled with strange questions. Who is this girl? What is she doing here? How had I not noticed her appearance on the bridge?
My interest in the stranger grew with every second, and I involuntarily just stared at her. Suddenly, as if sensing my frank gaze, the girl turned to me for a few seconds. But half a second was enough for me to reproduce her portrait in my mind. The first thing that caught my eye was her hair-dark, thick, falling in a waterfall down to her waist. The stranger's face was unusual, intriguing. The soft pale lips gave a slightly sharp contrast to her bright dark brown eyes. Her figure was slender, with no outlines of unhealthy thinness or starvation. The girl seemed mysterious and even beautiful to me. Her beauty was soft and expressive, like an autumn day that had not had time to cool down from the sun's rays, but already with the sun gone, sprinkling the sky with its farewell light.
For a moment our gazes crossed like swords. Suddenly the stranger took a quick step away from the bridge, as if fleeing from my unwilling, insistent attention. But I, as if mesmerised, looked after her, I just couldn't let her go. Let go of that magic.
Shit! What was I thinking?
I mentally berated myself for allowing myself to stare at some mortal, and, by an effort of will, albeit a hard one, I pushed the thought of her out of my head and remembered my immediate plans for the evening – to get away from the world and be in another reality for a while. But that memory brought back another, unwelcome memory-the scent of the stranger's blood, so tantalising. I would kill her and drink every last drop of that delicious blood.
No. Not this time.
I had principles I did not deviate from, even for the sake of such a unique flavour: killing girls and children was taboo for me. I hunted people who had already tasted life. The category of my victims started from the age of thirty to fifty, and I unmistakably felt the age of my victims, determining it by the smell of blood, and in the years of my life never made a single mistake. I felt that the girl I was interested in was still young, about twenty-two years old. Let her live. Maybe in eight years I'll find her and taste her blood.
With these thoughts I drove back to the castle. There, leaving the Toyota in the garage, I walked to the city.
In the morning several people were once again reported missing in Prague. When I heard this, I grinned: these were the hunting tracks of Markus and his fiancée. All the Prague newspapers wrote about these mysterious disappearances, including the cries of unhappy relatives and appeals for vigilance. The citizens of Prague discussed the news with bitter sighs. I, on the other hand, was filled only with indifference and derision.
CHAPTER 3
I passed the physics with flying colours: it was easy to tell what I had learnt long ago and knew like a proper name. And, although at this period of my life studying was a burden to me, being a part of modern universities was interesting to me at all times, and I was curious to see how education, its system, was changing, how every year new and new, unrepeatable faces appeared. At one time my hobby was people-watching, but this activity soon became nothing but a source of frustration and contempt for me.
Once again studying at Charles University, this time I chose the Faculty of Physics and Mathematics and was in my fifth year. Another year and a half and, having completed my studies in Prague, I would leave to study in Moscow. Admittedly, I had never been there. Russia always seemed to me a wild place, but nowadays the situation in this huge state has changed for the better, and I decided to visit its vast expanses and learn in practice what Russian higher education is. I had a lot of plans ahead of me. For example, to taste what Russian blood tastes like. It was raining this morning, and thanks to this beautiful weather, today I had a chance to change my mackintosh for my favourite leather jacket. As I headed towards the entrance of the faculty building, I fell into a crowd of young sophomore girls and immediately felt their eyes on me. They didn't even try to hide the fact that they were staring at me. Many mortal females were staring at me, deceived by my appearance. From the outside, it might have seemed that their attention flattered me, but in fact, I felt nothing but dislike. The girls were seduced by my good looks, but they had no idea what was behind the shell. And since mortals will never know that we exist, this human stupidity can even look somewhat amusing. Humans are entertaining creatures in their own right. But empty.
While the weather was perfect for a vampire, I decided to take a walk around Prague. On foot. I rarely got the chance to walk around the city, as rain was a rarity this year, and overcast weather seemed to have given way to sunny days. I did not attend the university on too bright days, and now I had a large number of absences to my credit, for which no one dared reproach me. In addition to being one of the best students, I was a regular contributor to the accounts of my alma mater with large sums of euros. Commerce was to my heart for two reasons: firstly, I made my own schedule of classes, and I had no problems with my studies. The second reason was more trivial: my mother always said that grants should be left to the smart but unfit mortals. Besides, to take a grant away from a green human chick would be a real insult to my dignity.
As soon as I left the university I ran into a fellow student, Royce MacRessos, an ambitious American who occasionally annoyed me by trying to talk to me. Royce extended his hand to me, but I never shook hands with anyone, because my palms were inhuman, and I knew what people thought about shaking hands with us: we had icy hands. So I pretended to be frozen, hid my hands in my pockets, and frowned and muttered:
