The following is a recounting of true events that transpired in my life in the year 2000. It is a cautionary tale. I see it as a good reflection of how entwined physically and emotionally vampires can get with their surroundings and their emotions. It was a difficult period of course, but now looking back with the added perspective of several years, I can assure you that I have been relieved of my anger and I am now in a good place. I hope this tale enriches you as well.

What I would share is nothing superficial or superfluous. I write of life and death, of the emotions that can weld one person's spirit to another, of a trait, a "gift", a quirk in the genes somewhere that demands acknowledgement and appeasement...or the consequences are hideous. Please, attend me.

I can tell of two things which appear to me to be true: my beloved primary donor is dead, and I, by the grace of the Great Mother/Great Spirit/call it what you like, am alive. If "donor" is now ambiguous, the term might well be clarified by my narrative. As I have said, I am part of a greater "we", and it is a "we" that merits freedom from labels. I would suggest reading Sascher- Masoch's Venus In Furs. The essence and lusts of Wanda present a deliciously intense experience in what we are, much more so than any cryptic word.

My primary donor was a woman named Lupa, a woman I loved as much for the human she was as I loved her in our bond of blood. I first drank of Lupa's sweet blood--her blood did always have an affect like quality champagne on me--in 1984. I'm familiar with the questions and the revulsion, but my purpose now is not to justify myself or my actions. All anyone needs to know is that imbibing--blood drinking, if you must--is not the major part of my existence, and that Lupa and all those who followed her came and participated of their own free will and volition.

Not that I've had so very many donors other than Lupa. We are not living in the safest age for an imbiber; I have read where there are no blood condoms, and this is a humorous way of describing a horrifying truth. Lupa and I could always depend on each other to be safe. She knew I wasn't some clod kid bumbling with a knife but a creature of the real thing, a feeder who also knew the importance of cleanliness and hygienics. Here I am using the words "donor" and "feeder", which to me imply a one-way experience. The process is a circuit; the donor gives, but the donor receives as well. For Lupa and I, our sanguine rites must have been no less than the sex dance between two true lovers.

Well, I wouldn't have minded being lovers with her, either. But Lupa never swung that way, and far be it from me to try and force the issue. My love for Lupa had a very physical grounding, and whether that was a matter of nature or the simple fact that I'd partaken of so much of her corporeal being is still a riddle for me. I suspect anyone could have loved Lupa. She was beautiful, sure, in a dark and petite kind of way. I call her Lupa; this was the name she'd acquired from friends because of her love of wolves. When I looked in her eyes, such a dark brown as to almost be black, I could feel the she-wolf looking back at me. Lupa herself may have been passive, but her totem was a predator...and I too was a predator. We recognized this common bond in each other's natures. I brought out the animal who otherwise might have stayed dormant, I summoned the strength and the courage and the wit of the hunter forward to the point where Lupa could shed her human frailty and take on the power of her namesake. Maybe it's ironic that the 5'9" giant needed to drink of the 5'2" flower, that the beasts within us both needed release in the circuit of blood and flashing blades and blush lips.

Lupa. Right now, even as I can feel the warm flesh of a man I love here in real time, I can still feel her, too. Help me, I see the tiny bow of her mouth, her unique smile, stretching out a perfect white arm or spreading ivory thighs for my blade. Lupa played my donor, but she was no fool. She knew I regarded her as my equal, if not my better, for it was from her the nourishment of my life would pour. Sixteen years is a long time in anyone's life, even longer when it is roughly half your own existence. In all that time, from the first time she let me cut her to the final evening she fed me, I knew myself the luckiest creature.

And who among THEM ever knew, or even guessed? Who among them even cared that I came so exquisitely close to following my beloved to the grave?

If I had known...but then, my kind isn't prescient. Lupa and I shared a dance, yes, but not without trials and triumphs. Many times distance parted us, and I needed to find other trustworthy donors to maintain myself. When Lupa got involved with the furry subculture--which I would place as having happened sometime in 1997--I didn't think anything of it, good or ill. I'd just moved where I could be closer to Lupa, and she had resumed her place as my partner in our longtime dance. Naturally Lupa enjoyed furry activities; she even had an exquisite white wolf suit crafted for her. I listened with all the attention demanded of me, but I must admit I found it rather silly. Lupa continuously tried to get me involved in the furry subculture. Her argument that I had an animal totem (I have several, but one in particular) and might therefore find something of value in furry didn't hold water with me. After all, I wasn't entirely sure what kind of creature (a sanguinarian you crazy cunt, you are a sanguinarian, can't you fucking admit it even now?) I was in the first place. For all I knew I was an Other parading around in a human suit.

By the summer of 2000, Lupa was living in the house I'd recently had built, along with a few others I knew I could trust with my little idiosyncrasies. When Lupa had first been diagnosed she could still walk most of the time; now, Lupa spent most of her time in her hated wheelchair. Trust me, I felt horrible about having her as my loyal donor now, but Lupa insisted. The experience gave her too much power and pleasure, both of which were in short reserves within her.

Which of us spied him first, was it me or Lupa, and does it really matter? Through some Internet site or another we found who I will only call Wolfboy, as much as I burn to disclose his identity. He lived somewhere in England, and like Lupa, he was into furry and he loved wolves. All the rest of the world fell away for Lupa. She thought--no, she knew that Wolfboy was her soulmate, the wolf man of her recurrent dreams. I started worrying that maybe I'd drunk too deep and she'd lost her sense. Unfortunately, I had nothing to do with it, for if I had, I could have stopped it. Lupa contacted Wolfboy, and a quick friendship blossomed into profound romance.

Lupa had never been in love like this. If you're wondering if I felt jealous, I'll admit I was. She never missed a step in the dance we had together, but now it seemed Wolfboy was there with us, too. Maybe I felt that he was somehow looking down on us, on our giving and feeding, and somehow thinking that now Lupa's heart belonged to him alone. I knew him, as well as I'd ever get to know anyone over the Internet and across the ocean. While he was nice enough, he wasn't the kind of man I'd throw everything to the wind to love. Then again, I wasn't Lupa, either.

All at once, the romance was over. His words of tender passion and blazing love, gone. The promises of forever evaporated like dew in the morning sun. He gave the standard we-can-be-friends line, but Lupa knew better. Lupa had given Wolfboy everything--heart, soul, and mind. She never met the man in person, but she lived and breathed for him. Now the earth had stopped. The full moon would never again rise in the east. Lupa believed she had only one recourse. On the night of August 30, Lupa fed me for the last time.

I have a lot of reasons to hate Wolfboy, I suppose. That his romantic ineptitude caused trouble in my home for two months is a strike against him. That he drove Lupa to take her own life in what I've heard called the "glorious exit" is something that, in retrospect, is clear to me. But I don't think Wolfboy did, or ever will, understand just what the relationship between Lupa and I was. No, I didn't spout romantic mouthing or cliches at her. Our love was on a much more primal level. Wolfboy tore Lupa away from me through his own selfishness and chilled emotions. When Lupa died, I almost died with her.

Meph knew this. He and I had met in 1991 and had enjoyed a variety of relationships since--friends, adversaries, lovers. His profession demands a tight schedule, but he wanted to come and be with me anyway. I didn't need to worry about his life on top of Lupa's lost life, and so I agreed to meet up with him when he came to New Orleans on November 3. Meph conceded reluctantly, and even I questioned whether I would make the two month stretch.

What, no donors? Believe me, I was far too depressed to attain that level of intimacy with anyone new. Knowing Wolfboy still thrived and was still on the Internet, I decided to try what I call "mindvamping". It's the gentle way to feed, I suppose. I latched onto Wolfboy like a mosquito, determine to suck what psychic juices I could from him. I'd try to twist him this way and that, just to produce some kind of emotion to satisfy me. As for Wolfboy, he took this as friendship. Eventually, with two weeks to go until seeing Meph, I knew I'd gotten everything I could out of Wolfboy. He no longer even cared that he'd cost the life of a woman he purportedly loved.

On November 3, I saw my Meph for the first time in almost a year. I immediately saw something of my own death fetch in his eyes. Nothing could scare this man, I'd thought, but he fell back, clasping my hands, examining the whole of me with cold shock. When he chooses, his eyes can be so clear as to betray his mind.

In his hotel suite, Meph gasped--not from the pain of my blade, for what was one more cut to him? No, there was something else, an ecstasy maybe, a release of tension, maybe even the dawning that I really did love him in my own fashion, and that drinking from him was solid proof of my trust in him. But then I was lost. Except for the tug of his fingers in my hair, his hands pushing me against the cut and encouraging me to feed, I knew only blood, sweet, hot, pulsing blood, so much blood for such a small cut. Maybe in some other context it would have been greed, but I opened my mouth wider than ever before, determined that not one precious drop of Meph would escape me. Still, his blood splashed against my face with a warmth like sunshine on late winter skin. Something within me began to rise, my own personal phoenix. I was coming back from wherever I'd retreated, I was returning and Meph was bringing me. For such a small price--and now Meph was writhing on the bed, crying out for me, not to stop but to be his own.

We're together now, and I don't know where to go from here. How I'm ever supposed to leave Meph again, I can't figure. He's here, curled up next to me, his head competing with my notebook computer for space on my belly. I'm not a fool; Meph's entire long-haired head is using me for a pillow while the notebook is falling off to the side. My wrists will hate me for this. Well, damn them.

Meph mentioned earlier tonight that my kind is plagued with clearer thinking than the rest of humanity. Concepts of vengeance and revenge are clean. I'd love to be able to say all right, I ve got mine, the furries can piss up a tree, and the Wolfboy in particular can hump whatever sad flesh he can find into cardiac oblivion. It's not that simple. The scales are unbalanced and somewhere, somebody's going to pay if not for Lupa s death, then for the two months I spent dying. I can't kid myself; I know who's responsible. I know who slaughtered my donor--my love, my sister--with his lies and false love. The furries, or the group in which Wolfboy plays, seem to think of Lupa's death as some kind of game, one to be forgotten when the going gets dreary. They don't really remember her (oh, they'll contradict this, of course) and probably never even bothered to know her in the first place.

Now I can finally cry. Meph woke up, took an edge of the blanket to wipe my tears, then elected to kiss them away instead. I'm going to put this down now and hold him. Lupa. Wolfboy. Revenge. They are associated in my mind like a litany.