“Who was your creator? What happened to him?” Dr. Angelus chewed the end of his pen after he asked.

I laughed. “He told me his name was Valor. I never knew where he came from. I discovered later that he was killed by a father who came across him as he was having his way with the man’s daughter.” Out of a sense of duty to my creator, I killed the father, then bathed in his daughter’s blood.

“So what happened next? Did you move away from your home? When did you discover that bathing in blood would turn back the signs of age?”

I smirked. “What happened next was I fed my newfound hunger. I killed nightly.” Ahh, what a glorious orgy of death those years were. With each spirit I consumed, I got stronger. And crazier. “It was quite by accident that I discovered if bathed in blood, I could reverse the mark of time on my body, virgins’ blood being the most potent. I learned on my own how to bind my servants to me so that they would obey. They brought me victims from outside my lands and helped me grow stronger. But, not strong enough to save myself when they came to arrest me.”

“Who arrested you?” He stared at me raptly, my morbid story fascinating the researcher in him.

His expression surprised me. I’d expected horror, disgust, even condemnation, but instead he scribbled away as I spoke, his excitement obvious. “I was arrested by a council of my peers. The villagers not under my control complained that I was killing them. So they came to investigate.” Oh, the dilemma. They hadn’t wanted to kill me, a noblewoman, but at the same time they could not allow me to continue to kill. “I was never formally charged, and I retained enough of my wits to ensure I didn’t reveal too much of my new nature. In a quandary, they placed me in my rooms and bricked up the entrances, leaving only a tiny slot for food.”