Few have known the true terror of the night. To most, vampires haven’t been real for thousands of years. It is as if society chose to ignore them, as if it would ease their simple minds, forcing everyone to forget them. The Salem Witch trials have been echoed across history, but few know of what we faced then. The wrath of man . . . it was an excuse.

We were asked to attend a local gathering, one that was meant to serve as an opportunity so that the supernatural and the natural would perhaps live together, but those damn Bertrams . . . . They messed up everything. For you to know them, I have to tell you the origin story of where vampires came from, and to be honest I do not know the answer myself.

History books have always been vague when it comes to where it all started, but they all meet at the same end. The Bertrams, and the Zeidans. The two most prominent vampire houses that all knew, respected and feared. My name is Alfred Zeidan, and I am the youngest in my family, thus, I am free from the burdens of ruling over the rest; that responsibility is my father’s, as it was his before him.

The Bertrams are a family of snakes. Granted, vampires do have their sins, but them? They were more cunning than a fox, and it was them who appeared to the public that they wanted to propose peace with humans; we would live on animal blood. It tastes no different, to be honest with you, and I couldn’t care less, but they used that as a cover.

The night of a dark orbit, when the moon completely disappears is when all vampires lose their powers. The Bertrams suggested on that date that we go and talk to humans . . . talk to them so that we may share the surface with them. My family, and a lot of vampires, went there, and they were captured, beaten and burned at the stake. But humans forgot one thing: a dark orbit occurs once every one hundred thousand years only.

And now look at them. Measly humans have forgotten that we even exist.

But nonetheless, not all of us went to the trial. Not all of us trusted those damned Bertrams, and so my family swore that they would one day return the favor.

It is the sole reason why I left these ancient feuds that started long before anyone alive today can remember, and we are immortal. What does that tell you? Greed is such a powerful feeling. You see, when you become a vampire, your feelings are amplified. What were they called? The Seven Deadly Sins? But also, your powers grow beyond and beyond every time you kill another vampire. The older, the better.

It’s been more than a hundred years since I last went back to my family. All they could hear were rumors of a ferocious beast that knows no peace, nor honor. I live to kill. I kill to be powerful, in order to stop a war from ever occurring. Increase and increase, but the chickens will always go back home to roost. That is why in ancient Rome, they started to call me the Fortier, and the name since then, just stuck.