Free The Anatomy of Vampires: Volume 1 by Alistair Vlain Page A

would inevitably be a church just down the street.
     
    I don’t recall what time of night it was. The only thing I can remember was the overwhelming blanket of clouds completely encasing the moon and stars. There was absolutely no light that night and I didn’t wait, dashing from the inn to the empty streets. It seemed most heathens in this world sought retribution when it was darkest and bleakest—when no one would be watching. I knew the church would have its doors open. I ran, the sound of my soles slapping the wet cobblestones, my briefcase heavy in my hand. I ran until I reached the part of the town center that snaked off into various, outlying alleyways and side streets—where the buildings seemed more crooked and worn and the streetlamp lighting just a little dimmer.
    I found the brothel, wedged between a bank and a sterile-looking office building—the church I’d been looking for. There were chinks missing in the stone walls, the steeple needed painting and looked like it might tumble and fall with the next breeze, but it was standing, and the front door was cracked as if the very place awaited my arrival.
    I entered quietly, slipping easily through the crack in the door without shifting it, and blessed myself with the pool of holy water waiting in a stone basin just off to the side. After all I’d learned of what truly did exist in the world, it was mostly out of respect and less out of belief.
    There were monsters in the world.
    Demons were real and they took the life of my beloved and made her what they are. Bloodthirsty things. Things that are wicked and wondrous and crave our flesh in the night. These are the things I believed in now and impassioned me to search for the real truth. And maybe I would find some of those answers inside the decaying walls of Catholicism and ancient spirituality.
    The church was modest—only room enough for less than one hundred people in the pews and a choir adorned with the images of Jesus Christ, but not in the opulent, golden way he was depicted in the famous basilicas of London, Paris, or Prague. These were simpler walls, with a few pieces of stained glass, crude murals, and a short nun who emerged to me through another doorway.
    I stopped, my briefcase still clutched tightly in my hand, and regarded her with a wide-eyed, childlike question. As I observed her kindly disposition about her cracked spectacles and rosy cheeks, and I knew she would not turn me away. She approached me with both hands folded delicately in front of her, the color of her hair hidden from sight. Her feet were covered in nothing more than white socks and patched-up sandals.
    “Good evening, son.” She smiled and nodded, her voice delicate. It reminded me of the twinkling of a wind chime.
    “Evening.” I hesitated, flipping through choices in my head of how to word my request. “I’m aware of the late hour, but—”
    “I know why you have come,” she nearly whispered.
    I snapped my mouth shut and simply frowned at her. Impossible. Was she mistaken? How could she possibly know?
    “You do?” I asked and waited for her to say something about repenting for my sins, learning about the trinity, or something similar. But she didn’t. She didn’t say anything at all. With a twinkle in her eye and a tightly wound grin, she turned.
    “Follow me,” she murmured and retreated back in the direction she entered from. I followed. There was something in the way she looked at me that told me she really did have a true understanding about why I was there. It was something which was more present in the words she did not say, rather than in the ones she did.
    I had to ask, “How do you know?”
    She peered at me whimsically over her round shoulder. “They are watching. There’s not a lot I can say other than you must heed the words concealed in the letter given to you. You must find your answers, word them carefully, and go.”
    “Might I remove texts from this library?”
    “The volumes on these