I walked into the room, threw my knapsack in a corner, poured fresh blood into an iron goblet, and contemplated the fire dancing in the fireplace. Sometimes I thought about people and marvelled at how imperfect they are: where do they find time for studies, seminars, recreation and personal life when they need sleep and food every 24 hours, at least three times a day? We are another matter. We are always full of vigour and energy. We do not need to sleep, but only for a couple of seconds we go deep into the depths of our consciousness, and that is enough for a whole week. The blood of one victim lasts at least three days, a week at the most, depending on how hardened the organism is.
In the evening I went down to the main hall, where I found my parents and Markus and his fiancée: Mariszka had recently moved in with us and had become a legal resident of the castle and a member of our family.
Her mother and father always sat next to each other: they were very fond of each other and rarely parted. Mortals thought they were my brother and sister, so young and beautiful they were.
My mother was a native Czech. Despite the fact that she was over five hundred years old, she was beautiful: she had skin as matte white as snow, her beautiful long wavy hair of dark brown colour was astonishingly luxurious. Light brown eyes, a clear, gently arched brow line. My mother was a remarkably beautiful woman, and no mortal gave her more than twenty-five years of age.
My father, a true native of Foggy Albion, had the same white skin as his wife, but his coal-black hair gave him a somewhat gloomy and over-aristocratic appearance. His eyes – cold, blue, smiled rarely. In the eyes of mortals, he was a young, gorgeous man. In reality, he was five hundred and seventy-four years old.
And only his eyes gave away the true age of my parents – they glittered with knowledge and centuries of wisdom, and seemed to pierce the consciousness.
Markus and Mariszka were sitting in the far corner, whispering about something. It was our custom not to eavesdrop on each other, so no one paid attention to their confidential conversation. Or rather, love cooing.
When I entered the hall, my father was telling my mother about an old friend who was soon going to visit us for a couple of days. This news did not make me happy: friends were nothing but trouble for our family. Almost every month one of my father's or mother's friends would visit our castle, either alone or in clans, and then things would get very bad. The Praguers. Since it cost a lot of money to feed a horde of vampires, from the very first day of their stay, the Prague newspapers trumpeted that Prague was once again home to a maniac. Other journalists speculated about an unknown predator killing people in the woods. Some vampires behaved too openly and brazenly: despite strict warnings not to kill unnecessarily, they killed for fun. I was always annoyed by it, but my father stubbornly forgave those apostates, arguing that they had been friends for centuries.