Before Blue Twilight

Chapter 1

Alone.

I'd lived alone for so many centuries that I'd had enough, and so I'd decided to end it that night, and I prayed to whatever gods might exist that there was no such thing as the immortality of the soul, or that if there was, I had lost mine long ago. I had no desire to go on. Not then. Not in any form.

There remained in me, ironically, the heart of a romantic, the soul of a poet who didn't compose, only felt. Fitting, then, that I chose to make my last moments on this earth worthy. That is why I found myself lying on the hard, dew-dampened cliff above a thundering waterfall in the darkest hours of that long ago night.

I lay there, listening to the roar of the waterfall and tasting its mist on the air. I stared up at a moonless sky full of diamond-like stars and waited to see the sunrise for the first time in countless centuries. I wondered how high that golden orb would climb before its kiss caused my body to smolder; how long I would be allowed to gaze upon it before fire consumed my flesh and bones.

It would be painful — unbearably, maddeningly painful to a creature whose senses were as heightened as those of a centuries-old vampire. I will not say I didn't fear the pain — I did. I waited in dread of it. And yet, I would welcome it for the sweet release of nothingness I so hoped would await me on the other side.

It had been a long life, a full one. But not a good one. Immortality had been wasted on a man like me.

I lay there, awaiting the sun, awaiting death, my back upon the cool, solid stone of the earth, my face and clothes coated in the falls' mist, my eyes filled with the stars as they faded slowly into a sky that paled from indigo to purple. It wouldn't be long now. Another hour, two at most.

The roar and rush of water was joined by the harmony of those birds that rose before dawn and began their nightly task of singing up the sun. I listened to that song as I never had before. Always it had been a warning to me. Now it was a dirge, my personal requiem. I closed my eyes and relished the symphony as I awaited death's arrival.

Then an unwelcome sound stumbled into the song — one of discord — a sour note that did not belong and that would change everything. I think I knew it, even then. It was the sound of a woman, crying.

I opened my eyes, angered at the interruption. Ruined. My beautiful, poetic exit from the world was ruined. Sitting up, I sought the source of the weeping, thinking the interloper would be fortunate if I didn't decide to take her with me on my final journey. When I saw her, I rose to my feet, my body acting of its own will.

Even at this distance I could see that she was beautiful. There was no question, not to my preternatural eyes. She stood on the opposite side of the dark cascade, on the very edge, staring down into the rocky froth far below, and I knew that she intended to jump.

She intended to die. Just like me.