I wish I could tell you I remember them all, but there have simply been too many over the years. Although I only need to feed every few days, I have still taken the blood of thousands. Do you remember everything you ate last week, let alone a thousand meals ago? For all of my power, my memory is scarcely better than yours, and I have much, much more to remember. There is one, though, who is etched in my mind; I doubt I will ever forget her.
This would have been sometime in the late 1700’s, you will forgive me if I do not remember the exact year, but it was shortly before I came to this continent. I reveal no great secret of my kind when I tell you that you will rarely find us living within your large cities. The weakest among us is more than a match for any one of you, but we have been and always will be vastly outnumbered, and our greatest strength is that so many humans willingly turn a blind eye to our existence. You could eliminate us in a heartbeat if you chose to, but that would require admitting we exist, and you know as well as I that will never happen. Still, there is little point in tempting the Fates. I always try to confine my hunting to areas where the residents have little contact with the outside world, and no desire to involve others in their troubles.
I had made my home in the mountains of Catalonia, isolated but within a short distance of several small villages. You belong to a visual species, so it may surprise or even disgust you to hear that it was her smell that first attracted me, and her smell that still lingers in my mind. You will not understand, you cannot understand, but try to imagine a woman more beautiful than any you have ever seen, a woman so heartbreakingly lovely that the merest glimpse of her would capture your soul forever. That was the effect she had on me, and it was the wind that brought her beauty to me, and drew me to her that night.
She was asleep as I approached, but it would have mattered little even if she had been wide awake. They never sense me until I am close enough to touch, and by then it is far too late. She did not utter a sound as I grasped her shoulders; again, they never do. Over the centuries not one has made the slightest sound as I've taken them in my arms, not in surprise, not in terror, not in alarm. I‘ve often wondered what accounts for their silence. Is it some hypnotic power I hold over them or simply the rigid pose of any prey when it knows death is near?
Her raven-black hair crinkled through my fingers as I pulled her close. My skin felt aflame from the heat of her body, her pulse almost deafening as it thundered in my ears. As I lowered my lips to her neck, I paused to look into her eyes. There was no fear there, no desperation, no silent plea for mercy. What I saw in her eyes was love, and I know she saw the same in mine. I have no doubt you question her ability to love me, to love her killer. I know what I saw as she gazed up at me, and for those timeless few seconds, the love she and I shared was greater than any you could ever even hope to know.
And then it was over. However much I may have loved her at that moment, it could only be for that moment. Sunrise was approaching, and my home was some distance away. Whatever you may have heard, even the strongest sunlight poses no threat to me, but the village would rise with the dawn, and I had no wish to be seen. Her pulse fluttered against my tongue as my teeth gently pierced her flesh. I cannot honestly tell you she felt no pain as I drank in her blood, but I did restrain the worst of my hunger until I felt her heartbeat stop. A soft sigh escaped her lips, and she was gone. My control slipped then, and I drained the rest of her blood and gorged myself on her heart and liver.
The sun was just breaking over the hills as I left her and ran for home and rest. I left her body for the goat herders to find, as I had uncountable times before. No doubt they lamented the loss to their flock, and cursed me for taking her life, but within days they would have gone on with their short little lives, and she would have been gone from their thoughts. She has never left mine.
Excerpt from "The Chupacabra Diaries".