IntheEnd

    Alec Drake listened to the hollow sound of his footsteps reverberating against the walls of the brownstone apartments as he walked down the deserted street. The blood of the whore he'd killed still ran warm through his veins, but he felt--as he had so often through the last few centuries--cold. The killing gave him neither pleasure nor pain. He was indifferent to it, as he was indifferent to the air he breathed. Surely it had not always been so!
     He vaguely remembered the fiasco in London as being if not exciting, at least involving. The girl had been so like his long-lost love that she'd given him some hope of contact and converse with a being other than himself. Sadly, she'd been no different, in the end, then the rest of the human race. She could not meet his eyes without losing herself in them. She could not hear his voice without her will falling prey to his. Now, even her face had faded in his memory like a pressed flower.
     No one could resist him. It was his gift and his curse. Even Van Helsing and those others had, in the end, seen precisely what he wanted them to see.
     Alec paused, leaning against a tree, and wondered why he had bothered to stop them. Why was he still walking the earth? Why was he still killing? What was it that he was waiting for? He had grown bored of raw power long ago. Of what use were a kingdom and subjects to him? He could attain them with little effort, but in the end they gave him nothing. It would be a kingdom of fear and hatred. Truth and kindness had no place in his reality.
     What he wouldn't give for just one conversation! He didn't want to dominate. He wanted more than anything to stand on equal footing with someone once more.
     A sound from a window in the hotel behind him intruded on his thoughts. Someone was reading, idly turning a page every few moments. Alec glanced back, irritated, and his glance froze. The room was dark. Curiosity got the better of him, and Alec slipped in through the window without making a sound.
     A young, beautiful woman sat at the desk, running her fingers along the pages of her book while her eyes stared ahead sightlessly. At Alec's entrance, she froze.
     "Who's there?" she asked roughly, feeling behind her for the bellpull. "Come over here right now or I'll call someone."
     "Don't," he said as he stepped next to her. To his shock, his command had no effect whatsoever. He grabbed her wrist just as she found the bellpull, and she gasped at the chill of his touch.
     "No, my dear." He knelt down next to her. "That would not be wise." Her eyes showed not a flicker of understanding.
     With her free hand, she goped up his arm until she found his face.
     "I don't know you," she rasped, pausing with her fingers resting lightly on his lips.
     "I am Alec." He released her other hand and it flew to his throat in time to catch his last word.
     "Alec?" she asked.
     "Yes," he whispered, realizing that for the first time in an eternity he did not know what the girl would say next. He was flooded suddenly with such joy and relief that tears fell down his cheeks.
     "You're crying," she wondered, brushing away his tears. "Why?"
     "I haven't spoken to anyone since my...wife...died..." he offered a half-truth. "No one can listen. No one can look me in the eye."
     She nodded slowly, considering his words.
     "When I was little," she said slowly and laboriously, "I thought no one listened to me. I found out later that I didn't know how to speak to them."
     Alec chuckled bitterly.
     "I cannot speak to anyone who could hear me."
     She was obviously confused, but she didn't press him.
     "Most people still can't understand me," she said. "They can't bear to hear me try to speak."
     "What do you do?" There was a glimmer of hope here.
     "To them," she said. "I write."
     Alec hung his head. It wasn't what he needed.
     She wiped more tears from his face, oblivious to their red tint, and then suddenly grabbed him by the shoulders and shook him.
     "You can see, can't you? You can hear!" Frustration tightened her throat and garbled her words. "You have what I would give anything for! What more do you want?"
     He closed his eyes in pain, and them opened them to meet her blind ones. "I want to be able to share it with someone." As he spoke the words, he realized just how true they were. He couldn't enjoy any experience with no one to share it with. The only thing he wanted was what he'd lost so long ago: a companion.
     "You are as lonely as I," the girl croaked, and pain filled her eyes.
     A terrible thought came to Alec, then. Terrible and terribly seductive. She could not be mesmerized now, and if she went along with his plan she could soon be beyond his power forever, without first having her mind destroyed like all the other girls.