After-Dinner Activities or What Would a Vampire Do? (Part Two)

So assuming a vampire doesn't need all night to sup, what would he/she do for the rest of the night?

It was a question, I think, many vampire novels don't address. Most of them are written from the victim's perspective, where the emphasis is on the attack. Or even if they are from the vampire's perspective, it's about the stalking and then the attack.

But what happens when the attack is finished? Then what?

That was the question I asked myself a couple years ago when writing the second novel of Before the Blood, my five-novel prequel to the BryonySeries trilogy.

The protagonist, Kellen Weschler, is a poor seventeenth century German farmer who is turned while dying from the bubonic plague. During his miserable years of life, Kellen was one joy.

He can read.

Now his only reading material is his grandmother's “Straf Mich Gott” Bible. But now that he is immortal with the ability to teleport through time, and now that he has plenty of middle of the night time on his hands, why he would read.

And so he does.

But the problem with reading a good book is that one gets lost in a good book. What if Kellen got so engrossed that he lost track of time and someone found him, or, worse, dawn sneaked up?

So I answered that, too. Like this. A bit raw and unedited, but I'm still drafting.

Oh, and if you're wondering what comes next, that's the bit I'll be reading sometime between 6 and 8:30 p.m. Nov. 2 at the Book and Bean Library, 3395 Black Road, Joliet.

That's the date and time for WriteOn Joliet's semi-annual open mic night. Well, open mic for members. Entertainment for attendees. Please join us.

And now, here's what THIS vampire does after dinner.

During the initial century after his turning, Kellen was content simply to experience a new pleasure: leisure. Freed from the minute by minute struggle to survive another trip around the sun, Kellen, once he had destroyed and imbibed,  had the long hours of night to enjoy.

                Now Kellen didn't care about soft evening winds brushing his icy skin, the stunning stars under which he pranced, warm summers and brisk winters, or the dew kissing his feet good morning and reminding him to dig a deep hole for the day.

                No, Kellen seeped through the cracks of library walls and read.

                At the Codrington Library of Oxford University, Kellen huddled in the recess at the north end of this narrow building, a curious meld of gothic exterior and classical interior, and studied law. Inside the remote El Escorial in Spain, Kellen sat beneath vaulted ceilings and amongst the frescoes of the seven liberal arts, pouring over ancient manuscripts in their original Arabic, Greek, and Latin, and never wondering at his natural ability to read them.

                Kellen infiltrated the General Library of the University of Coimbra in Switzerland and feasted on manuscripts dating back to the eighth century. At the Admont Abbey Library in Austria, Kellen studied the frescoes depicting human knowledge and enlightenment.

                At the library inside the Hofburg Palace in Vienna, Kellen perused through all seven million items, including the sculptures and frescoes. The Albrecht Altdorfer Danube landscapes particularly fascinated him, and Kellen did not know why.

                Yet, it was a simple inscription outside this library that Kellen would always say held the most sway: “In quo omnes thesauri sapientiae et scientiae,” or "In which are stored all treasures of knowledge and science.”

                Because now they were stored inside Kellen.

                While Kellen read, a lone crow kept watch at the window and warned him of advancing dawn, much as he and Ilsabe once kept watch for Metta when they read from Straf Mich Gott.