I was a human being once, said the younger ghost. I was a blood drinker for centuries after that. And I am a ghost now. And my soul has been my soul in all three forms.

There are gaps in my education which no one could ever fill. But, they don't matter to me. I do not need to know science or algebra or geometry. Literature and music, painting and history-these are my passions. These are things that still, somehow in hours of quiet and lonesomeness, keep me alive.

Dear Reader, he switched human bodies before I made him a vampire, worry no more. It has nothing to do with this story.

He thought of the Englishman at the bar in the lobby again. That's what had brought it all back — the Englishman remarking to the bartender that he'd just come from New Orleans, and that certainly was a haunted city.

The Horror of the world was that thousands of evils fell upon innocent people, and no one was punished and with great promise there was nothing but pain and desire Children mutilated to form a choir of seraphim. Their song was a cry to heaven the sky was not listening.

I wish we had more visible Christian and Catholic leaders who talked about love.

Vengeance, blind and sterile and contemptible.