SNAP: The World Unfolds

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

“About two-hundred years ago I tired of our rivalry with the Huszar family.  It had gone on for so long that it became what we did.  We had the exquisite gift of immortality and we were wasting it squabbling.  We’d kill of few of them, they’d incite the local peasantry to track some of us down and kill us.”  He paused, his compelling eyes looking through me at some remembered time.  “It wasn’t enough to find beautiful people and turn them into vampires so that a Huszar could start a hunt.”

“I thought about it and did strategic planning.  What did we have that was different?  We were beautiful.  We attracted acolytes.  We could live forever.  Of course we had a little down side, too.  Living off blood, preferably human, wasn’t a great marketing technique.  Then I figured out that becoming a vampire was a desirable thing.  Find a person as the crest of his or her beauty and give them a chance to stay there forever.  In exchange, they agree to become a celebrity.  Sounds easy, right?”

Again, the looks back and forth.

“It did sound easy,” Pen finally said.  “And parts of it have been.  I love the luxury.  It’s wonderful to be taken care of.  But it’s a lot or work, too.  I have to be seen somewhere a few times a week, year-round.  I have no privacy.  And because I don’t age, Stefan must keep all of us on the move from place to place.  We can only stay about 20 years before the rumors of face-lifts and plastic surgery begin popping up.”

“It’s like a giant chess game,” Kandesky chuckled.  “It’s both harder and easier now with 24 hour global communications.  A hundred or so years ago, we were vaudeville stars.  We were models.  We were the beautiful people seen at parties.  We had our pictures painted and taken.  Then, after several years, we’d just switch.  Pen would go to Rio.  Carola would move to Paris.  Everyone would change names.”

I wasn’t sure what my questions were, but the biggest was, “Why?”

“Why what?” Kandesky asked.

“Why did you all go through so much trouble?”

“Mostly to keep things interesting,” he was amused.  “And with the beginnings of the media, we began to make money.  Lots of money.”

“I talked about the early screen magazines,” Jean-Louis spoke for the first time.  “One of the earliest, Picture This, was the Baron’s and the start of his ‘empire.’  He realized he was giving us fun jobs to do and allowing us to have cushy lifestyles.  It started getting trickier when we began to travel so much.”

“Speaking of travel,” I put in, “I’m a little jet-lagged and information over-loaded. I’d like to get outside for some fresh air and then go to my room.  I’m not adjusted to your night-time schedule yet.”

“Certainly.  One of the demons will go with you.”

Pen’s comment about privacy hit home and I started to say “No,” then touched my throat.  This was going to get difficult.  In LA, up until now no one had really known me.  I could go home.  Now that the Huszar family had found me, and wanted me as a way to compete with the Kandeskys, my privacy was gone.