I, Vampire.

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PART I

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Chapter One

In which all manner of things are explained.

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He rarely slept anymore, and when he did, it was a listless shadow of sleep barely worth the name. Fortunately, slumber, like many other things in his existence, was something he no longer required in the conventional sense. And so he sat tonight, still, silent and unsleeping as he did almost every night, though it might as well have been the middle of the day for all it mattered. With his fingers steepled beneath his chin, his vision was focused on the murky haze of infinity and while his eyes saw only the immediate darkness, his mind perceived the vast trail of years, of the decades and centuries that had brought him to this year, this month, this hour.

It was precisely two thousand years ago to this day that he had died.

Mycroft eased his posture and stretched a little in his chair. Though dead, he still felt discomfort when sitting too long in the same position, albeit more a psychological ache than one of poor circulation. On this day of all days, it had become impossible to keep his mind from casting itself back to his death and dwelling, self-indulgent though it was, on the events which killed him.

It had been a time of great peace and harmony in the land, where the old gods of Albion held sway in the lush Britannic countryside, before the invaders arrived in their heavy transports and their armoured leather kilts, carrying sharp pointed steel swords and long red shields. The Romans were fierce and fearless warriors, but so too were the Britons, none more so than the Queen of them all, Boudica. Even now, even after all this time, he could still hear her regal voice commanding the burning of Camulodunum and Londinium and the sacking of Verulanium where death had gushed red in the streets.

And Mycurrought of Isca, as he had been then, had gloried in it all; as a Commander of Boudica's Iceni, he had not been immune to the exultation of battle and a bloodlust slaked only by the visceral deaths of the enemy. He was good at death.

But the Romans were better.

In the last great battle, his injuries were mortal and with darkening eyes and slowing heart, he bade his servants carry him deep into the Oakwood and lay him quiet beneath the loftiest tree they could find; his blood and his bones a fitting bequest for the greatest of all the creatures in his beloved land. And so he had died.

Only to awaken wrapped within unbearably strong arms and with an agonising pain at his throat that seemed to him to be the blackest nightmare of hell; such blinding pain coursing through his rivened body as if all the lords of misrule were tearing him apart, at war for his soul. His torment was extreme and for brief seconds he had thought he was still dying a mortal death.

Which in a way, he was.

His eyes, clouded and dulling but a short time before were now burning with the livid light of a fire not feet from where he lay, yet though the flames were close, he felt no heat. It was as if a skin of ice had bound itself to his frame, a thing of biting anguish and the bitter snows of winter.

A hand, a mortal hand supported the back of his head, while another held up a goblet to his mouth and he felt himself forced to swallow a hot, viscous liquid that set another blaze inside him as raw and bright as the one not three hand-spans from his shaking limbs. He scorched internally, but not from any fire he knew, his vision all at once brighter and yet simultaneously darkened by fear and excruciating pain. The inner flames swelled and spread until he could bear it no longer and he died a second time.

The pale light of early dawn greeted Mycurrought at his next awakening. Both conflagrations, inside and out, were extinguished now; the grey ashes of the bonfire barely warm at his side, the incandescence at his core sunk to a near-tolerable smoulder. A roughly-tanned cow's hide covered his curled body as he lay among the sparse undergrowth, the crude blanket keeping almost every part of him away from the light of day. It had slipped a little from his face, and the streams of the rising sun hurt as much as they caressed. With feeble tugs, he brought the heavy cured skin up and over his head and in the false darkness, he slept again.

It was the sounds of the night which had finally roused him; owls and the distant yap of a fox. He pushed himself into a sitting position, though he felt as stiff and unwieldy as the primitively treated leather that fell away at his movement. Running a hand across his face, his skin was cool and dry, but lacking the deathly chilliness of the afterlife he was expecting. Was he dead? He was certain his injuries had done for him; it seemed impossible that he could have survived such physical offences. Scrabbling at his clothing, he traced fingers inside his shirt to locate the final killing wound just beside his heart.

There was nothing. Not even a scar.

Nor, he realised a few moments later, was there a heartbeat.

Sitting on the forest floor in the dark, with the flurry of night-predators in the air and the dampness of earth and decaying leaves beneath him, Mycurrought realised he was in one of three situations, none of which filled him with immediate joy. Either he wasn't dead, but was hallucinating, a bad sign surely if his hallucinations were this powerful. If not already dead, he must be very close to it, especially after the wounds he had taken in his final battle. Or, if he had died, then perhaps he had already crossed into the Fortunate Isles and instead of drinking wine and meeting old comrades was, for some unknown reason, sitting in a forest in the middle of the night. The third and least palatable possibility was that he had died ... but that he had not died quite enough.

There were things spoken of beyond the grave. Draugrs ... Again-walkers, but they were dreadful creatures that carried the grave and the stench of decay with them wherever they went. And somehow, he didn't feel like he was dead.

Assessing his condition, he realised that no matter how odd his situation, there were at least some positives. He had no pain whatsoever now, nor did he appear to have any lasting negative effects from any of his recent injuries, rather the opposite, in fact. Even the finger he'd lost from his sword-hand to a bronze dagger seemed to have grown back as if it had never been gone, save for a grey circumferential scar at the base. And while the night was dark and unlit by anything save a feeble slice of moon and the distant glitter of stars, Mycurrought found he could see and hear perfectly well, even down to noting the hairs on the back of his hand and the faintest twitter of bats overhead. His skin seemed pale but essentially unmarred and he had not yet been able to find any of the major scars he had gathered in the years of war. This was indeed passing strange.

Perhaps, if he really was dreaming, he should test the hypothesis by attempting to walk away from this landscape; it was well known that a dreamer could not leave the site of dreams behind; they followed wherever the dreamer went.

Struggling to his feet, his hands brushing against a small leather bag as he pushed himself up against the rough bole of the large tree under which he appeared to have been sheltering. Picking up the soft leather purse, the contents clinked and jingled faintly in his fingers. Whoever his saviour had been, they had left him with more than just his life. How intriguing. Mycurrought raised himself to his full and unusual height. He was tall among his people and therefore a natural target in the time of battle as he had found on several occasions.

Taking a deep breath, even though that too was more from habit than necessity, he started walking away from the ashes of the old fire, then stopped, returning to fold up the large cow-hide. It had served him well as a shelter and who knew what need he might have for it before the next night arrived. The hide was a full skin, covered in strange, arcane markings and in his undoubtedly weakened state should have felt onerously heavy, yet tucked beneath his arm; its weight was barely even noticeable. An additional fact of strangeness was added to the growing tally.

His long legs and uncannily clear vision soon found him clear of the trees and Mycurrought looked back over his shoulder. Not a dream, then. He frowned at the smell of blood and carnage that lay heavy in the air he turned to scan what had clearly been the site of a huge battle; a vast number of bodies stiff and hideous on the grassy sward around him. Casualties lay piled up against each other in a final union of violence and consequence; Romans and Britons both, white and motionless in the scrape of a moon. There had to be hundreds of corpses here.

So what did that make him? Not alive but not quite dead?

Wrinkling his nose at the rising miasma of death, he knew there would be no purpose in looking for the living here; he needed to try and find what was left of the Queen's army if his queen was yet alive, or perhaps some hermit-priest who could tell him more about his strange revival. He could do nothing without information, and he would not find that at this place of human ruin. Tucking the hide more securely under his arm, he turned his back on the tragic battlefield and walked towards his future.

Towards today, had he but known it then.

The black phone on his desk rang softly but he ignored it; at this time of night, it was clearly some unthinking overseas Control who neglected to consider time zones and therefore it could keep. Had it been the red phone, he would have answered. He had also muted his personal device, knowing that this day would not be an easy one for him; he had first turned it off, then relented, changing it to silent so an intrusive buzz would not disrupt his thoughts. His entire staff had been sent to a self-development seminar not due to finish before six and thus he had engineered events so that he might be perfectly alone with his thoughts and his contemplations, precisely as he desired, his mood not conducive to a productive workplace environment. And so he had remained alone and in the growing dark with nothing but his memories and reflections.

Reaching out an elegant hand, he brought the near-empty crystal tumbler to his lips and sipped the smoky golden spirit within. Along with scant need for sleep, Mycroft no longer required or desired the digestion of food ... not human food, at least. The idea of solid nourishment had been left as far in the past as had his ancient humanity, but his body was still able to tolerate certain comestibles, one of which, as he was rather pleased to verify on a regular basis, was high-end scotch. The particular Glenlivet of this evening was fifty years old and cost more per bottle than some of his junior staff earned in a year. He savoured every sip with something approaching genuine passion, the warming glow of the aromatic malt lingering deep inside him for hours. He would gladly have paid twice its cost for that alone.

Which he could do, if he chose. In fact, there was not a lot he couldn't do these days, one way or another. He was independently wealthy of course; one of the great boons of immortality being an ongoing access to the wonders of compound interest. At every reasonable occasion, he'd invest a decent chunk of cash in some very long-term speculative venture and simply forget about it for thirty or forty years. In the last few decades, he'd already made more than sufficient money to last him well into the following century, even at his present rate of expenditure and considering his expensive tastes.

And he did indeed have expensive tastes. Being only too well aware of the transience of everything, even of the great white cliffs that framed his island nation, Mycroft had quickly realised that he had no desire to keep replacing possessions. Thus, he made it a practice to select only the very best, not simply because he preferred quality, which of course one did, but more realistically, because the better quality things lasted longer. If he could wear a classic suit for five years instead of having to go through the routine of being fitted for a new one every five minutes, then the choice was obvious. Consequently, almost everything in his life was inevitably faultless and the envy of many, and not just his wardrobe.

Unfortunately, despite there being a number of solid gains on the positive side of immortality, Mycroft would, had he been in any discussion of the topic, have been the first to concede there were an equal number of detractions. But though there were things he would have changed if he could, after two thousand years of this particular form of existence, his outlook was pragmatic to say the least.

At the hour of his death, he had been in his mid-forties and still vigorous and hale. Since that time, he had not aged, not by a single day. His hair was still as dark as it ever had been and his skin, though paler now without regular exposure to the sun, was worn and lined only as much as it had been when the final sword-thrust stopped his heart. He grew neither older nor weaker as time had passed, instead, becoming stronger and seemingly more endurable with each decade. He did not eat, which made socialising difficult and he almost never slept, which made working easier. There were some things, the softer, human things, he no longer valued, just as he increasingly relished matters of the intellect. While his body had remained more or less unchanged to the naked eye, his mind had grown more powerful over the millennia and he was now able to oversee vast projects almost without leaving his chair. This was just as well. To offset an inevitable ennui, he had taken to observing the political movements of nations, rebellions and the great social concords: Heads of State became chess-pieces and he watched, fascinated, as governments, kings and queens, rose and fell. At first, he had relied on the tales of travellers, of sailors and merchants, and he grew to know the great ports of Plymouth, Portsmouth and London, where all the ships came to lay at anchor.

Then there were the written manuscripts, the literatures and philosophies of the priests, of the messengers of the ever-changing continental map. Mycroft pored over any document he could find, anything at all that spoke of international events and the life-and-deaths of those whose merest utterance could shape nations. Gutenberg printed his Bible and suddenly there were books; marvellous, wondrous things that carried precious words of knowledge first in German and Latin but then in an explosion of languages and increasing complexities. Mycroft accumulated hundreds of them wherever he could, creating his own libraries that contained all manner of information and detail with everything from hand-drawn maps and private letters to printed copies of Papal Bulls. He became increasingly aware of the ebb and flow of political tides, of the smallest actions that led, eventually, to the greatest revolutions. He learned to comprehend the power of secrets and determined to acquire them all.

At first, he engaged in fractional conversations at the edge of royal courts, then in coffee houses with the writers of plays. He became something of a fixture, albeit a fleeting one, at the political salons of the day, his words increasingly sought by those whose futures were in the public domain, though he himself could never be persuaded to step into the light on his own accord. Britain, his Britain, became the centre of the world and he was determined to secure her from the dangers he saw elsewhere. Over the centuries, he gradually returned to his guise of warrior, but this time as a secret guardian at the very epicentre of the British Government.

And he was still very good at death.

Of course, his life was very different from that of most people in this modern new age, but he had made of it the best he could. There was really only one area that still caused him something of a concern, though extreme age appeared to be dealing with that too. Mostly. Though he could no longer enjoy or digest the organic material that went into human meals, on increasingly rare occasions he still required that which humans themselves provided. Not to put too fine a point on things, once or twice a year he found himself needing to consume something a little more substantial than high-end scotch.

Blood. A considerable quantity of fresh blood. Pints of the stuff, in fact.

At first, he had flinched away from the idea of ingesting such a thing, but his body's demands eventually overcame his squeamishness. The early Britons had often used animal blood in a variety of foodstuffs; sausages and gravies for instance, but he had never attempted it au naturel, nor, thankfully, did the European notion of bathing in the blood of young virgins hold the slightest appeal. Despite his resistance, the increasingly overwhelming craving eventually conquered his repugnance and he tried a variety of species as sources before arriving at the somewhat tiresome conclusion that the human version was indeed the most effective solution for the craving when it arrived. Regrettable though it might be, he was pragmatic enough to accept he had little control over this particular inclination and thus went about securing a necessary supply with the same logic he applied to everything else in his life.

The arrival of fangs, several weeks after his dramatic revival in the wood, had been disquieting at first, but they were neat, compact things which stayed well out of the way as a general rule. However, Mycroft refused to play the predatory beast in any of this and, in the beginning, began by paying the poor for small quantities of fresh blood as he wandered from town to town searching for his lost Queen. Pretending it was for religious sacrificial purposes, the individuals he approached were only too glad to take his coin to ask too many questions. If he was careful, and he always was, he could harvest a reasonable quantity in only a few days. But it was slow work, and the temptation to simply prey on those unable to withstand his greater strength was difficult to resist at times, especially when his hunger grew compelling.

Today though, it was very different. For anyone with almost unlimited wealth, there were ways of acquiring such a ... resource. The easiest and most legitimate method was to arrange for a large transfusion direct from a series of willing and well-paid donors; generous payments ensuring there were no questions. Not too much was taken from any single individual, but enough, cumulatively, to revitalise him entirely. And while he was able to exist quite well on any of the blood-types, after the development of the blood-classification system in the early nineteen-hundreds, Mycroft discovered that he actually did better on a diet of A-Positive . It was a minor thing really, but when indulged, seemed to ward off the returning craving by several additional months.

Thus, in a world where musicians and celebrities of the silver screen routinely undertook entire-body transfusions for the sake of extended youth and vitality, his minor requirement had become a very small matter. Such a necessity could also offer a convenient proof, were such a thing ever demanded of him, of a rare disorder which – yes, oh, you poor man, how terrible for you – left him unable to walk outside in the full light of the midday sun. He was well able to manage some daylight, but the full sun hurt his eyes and made him impossibly drowsy. Fortunately, his smart suits kept him almost completely covered and he carried a large black umbrella at all times to ward off the odd, unexpected sunburst. No-one in his circle of acquaintances, such as they were, would ever be so boorish as to comment on either his pallor or extraordinary, un-aging longevity.

Mycroft had also taken pains to ensure he had all the conveniences of modern transportation, acquiring a range of motor vehicles, over the last eighty years or so, from the Jaguar Company. The notion of these lush beasts as means of everyday conveyance pleased him, especially since his were invariably black, with sun-blocking black-tinted windows. The growl of their engines as the car moved either under his own control or that of one of his drivers, provided his inner primitive with no little pleasure.

However, men of wealth and high-fortune inevitably attracted a coterie of hangers-on but other than a certain Mr Teddy Darrenveld, Head Cutter at Gieves and Hawkes, Mycroft had little affection for anyone. It took almost no effort to be seen as cold and withdrawn, even his co-founding in the eighteen-eighties, of The Diogenes, a gentleman's club where public socialisation was strictly forbidden, raised not a single eyebrow. After all the years of his existence, it was easier and less painful to keep his life uncluttered by attachment. Notwithstanding his other-than-human lifestyle, he had, over the long centuries, formed a number of personal relationships. Despite his best intentions, strangers had sometimes become unexpected acquaintances before morphing, on a number of occasions, into lovers and friends. Yet even as he relished the warmth of sensual companionship or fleeting camaraderie, his heart was cold, knowing, as only he could, of the ephemeral nature of life. He kept such liaisons deliberately short-lived and rare. It was too hard to watch them die in both the literal and figurative sense. In all the years, he had never heard of any others such as himself; to all intents and purposes, he was alone, and it was best kept that way, changing his last name as frequently as necessary to break any possibly trail.

Thus he possessed no animals as pets, no colleagues as close confidants and ruthlessly avoided any form of personal interaction. The closest he came to intimacy with another human being was at his bi-annual infusion, but even as the warm blood flowed into his tingling fingertips, he was always shielded by curtained screens, beyond the curious sight of his willing donors. He refused even the smallest overtures of friendship. To an immortal, caring was not an advantage.

And yet, despite his determination to remain distant and aloof from the humanity of which he knew he could no longer be a part, Mycroft admitted it had helped to form one or two strategic alliances, though sometimes he wondered if such was an precise description of the association.

The first and key of these was with the Holmes family or more accurately, with the great-grandfather of the current Holmes generation. It had been just prior to the outbreak of the Boer Wars when he had met Holmes Senior in the War Office in London. Though he'd heard quite a lot of the man through his connection with the Anglo-Afghan War of several years earlier, this was the first time Mycroft had occasion to meet Granville Holmes in person. A tall, dark-haired man of regal posture and with a distinctive military aversion to 'ordinary people', they had 'met' if such an epithet might be employed, during an argument via the Editorial Letters section of The Times newspaper regarding the usefulness of Edison's new electrical generating stations. After much disputation in writing, the scientific debate was taken to a local London laboratory in Camden Town where, with great theatre, Mycroft had not only arranged for the entire building to be electrified, but also for it to be lit throughout with the inventor's famous light bulbs and powered by his new generators.

An odd sort of friendship had begun at that moment, odd, in that it did not end when Granville died, but was taken up by his son, Albert Sherringford Holmes. Bertie Holmes had been introduced to Mycroft at a debate early in the new century at the Royal Society in Carlton House Terrace, where Granville brought the tall, pale Englishman into the conversation simply as 'a friend'. Bertie was possessed of the same critical and scientific mind as his father and thus the cordial relationship had continued, with Mycroft several times being invited to Bertie's house to dine with his family. Avoiding the actual dinners by inventing a digestion-problem resulting from the war, though carefully not specifying which particular war, Mycroft had nevertheless become a semi-regular presence at the Holmes' residence, interspersed by long intervals when he travelled abroad, enabling him to return to London almost as a stranger.

In 1938, Bertie was killed in a dreadful omnibus accident in Regent Street and it had been to Mycroft that the funeral and associated arrangements came; his organisation giving the bereaved widow complete freedom to care for her several girls who were almost all past school age. In order to more ably deal with the necessary forms and legal documentation, Mycroft at first tacitly and then legally assumed the name of Holmes; its use far less likely to cause raised eyebrows over his involvement with Bertie's widow. He never explained this to her and she never questioned his actions. Bertie's unexpectedly-arrived youngest child, a son called George and a mere infant when his father died, was supplied with appropriate tutors until he too began school. In the fullness of time, George went to Oxford, all costs managed by Mycroft under the guise of an insurance policy taken out by the dead man just before his demise.

Of all the Holmes brood, young George proved to be the most like his father and grandfather, eventually pursuing a career first as a scholar and then as a government scientist, earning himself a very high security rating with his involvement in the British Atomic Program. It was during his work with the Americans following the Second World War, that George met and married the mathematician Lillian Marie Jacobson, fifteen years his junior. Their only child, Sherlock, was born in 1975.

And it was in William Sherlock Scott Holmes that Mycroft finally found an intellectual equal and ... if such a thing might exist and if that thing were clothed in thorns ... a friend.

By the time young Sherlock was seven, he had already made Mycroft a de facto big brother, possibly because the older man knew absolutely everything about everything and the small, skinny boy absorbed knowledge and information by osmosis. Being unable to explain why the child might find him so fascinating, Mycroft, who had never knowingly sired children of his own, found himself equally absorbed by this latest Holmes scion. Neither George nor Lillian seemed to mind and, despite the fact that Mycroft was an old family friend in every sense of the word, they showed no indication of unease at the fact their young son hung on Mycroft's every word, which, as events turned out, was just as well.

Two weeks after Sherlock's ninth birthday, his parents were returning from a science symposium in Rome when the plane they were on collided with another on the Fiumicino runway. The ensuing explosion killed all on board the London-bound Boeing 727.

Once again, Mycroft was compelled to handle unlooked-for funerals, his normally stony composure at breaking-point when the small boy refused point-blank to allow him to leave.

"I must go, Sherlock; there are … things that have to be done."

"Then take me with you," the too-thin child wept against Mycroft's waistcoat, bony fingers locked into the fabric of his jacket. It was impossible, of course. Loath though he was to do it, Mycroft agreed to the recommendation of sedatives in order to calm the child into sleep and rest. It was a decision he would regret for many years.

But then everything had been taken care of; a quiet funeral and an even quieter time trying to find some kind of normality. Documents had been signed and properties sold and legalities dealt with. All the usual, problematic questions answered.

Except, of course, the question of young Sherlock.

Unbeknownst to Mycroft, both Lillian and George, in addition to conscripting him as their Executor, had also named him as a potential Guardian to their son. It seemed there was nobody else in the immediate family resident in Britain, who was in any way capable or remotely interested in the boy, and Mycroft found himself in something of a quandary.

"They remarked to me a few months ago that you would be an excellent custodian for Sherlock," the solicitor in charge of the Holme's estate and trust. "Of course, they could not possibly have known how prescient was their discussion."

"Unthinkable," Mycroft was at his most thoughtfully frigid. "It would be impossible for me to accommodate a child in my life. I work ... long hours, I travel; I have no idea or experience of child care, or ... anything child-related," he argued, on the back foot for once.

"And yet both George and Lillian Holmes felt you were the best person to care for their son ..." the solicitor had had this kind of conversation before. He knew people's weaknesses.

As did Mycroft, who turned and speared the man with a calculating look.

"I would not be good parent material," he said, finally.

"Even though two good parents disagreed with you, as, by the way, does their child," the solicitor lifted his eyebrows almost apologetically. A small whirlwind powered past him, pale white hands reaching up to hug the owner close against the smooth material of Mycroft's suit.

"Mycroft!" Sherlock's face was pressed tight against the tall man's chest, right where his watch-chain, a Victorian affectation he'd never really lost, met the rest of the world.

The solicitor caught Mycroft's eye and smiled sadly, his shrug expressive.

Looking down to the mop of dark, curling hair and even knowing it was the most foolish thing he might do, Mycroft felt an inexplicable rush of responsibility and regard for this, the last of the Holmes line. The boy clung to him with every ounce of his frail strength and trembled with desperation.

Realising he could no more abandon the child than fly, Mycroft rested a hand briefly on the boy's head and closed his eyes, already aware he was about to make a terrible error of judgement.

"I will need assistance to cater for the child's needs," he began, combing his fingers through the thatch of curls. "A Nanny, or housekeeper or some such ..."

"I can make all necessary arrangements for Sherlock's care, if you wish, Mr Holmes," the solicitor was all deprecating smiles now that he had his way.

"I think not," having made his decision, Mycroft was determined to manage the new responsibility the best he might. "I shall handle all matters concerning Sherlock from now on," he looked down. "Do you want to come home with me tonight or would you prefer to stay here until I have things arranged?" he addressed the top of the boy's head.

"Go with you," the muffled pronouncement was clear enough.

"Then come," Mycroft held out his hand.