The legs of the pianos sawn off, leaving the huge instruments to rest on the floor as he banged fiercely at the keys only to follow the action with hurried scribbling of musical notations on crumpled parchment. Inside I found two pianos, and a wild-eyed man sitting on the floor between them.
Silently willing my body into the air, I peered through the upper window. In the upper room of a modest home, I saw flickering candlelight illuminating through the window, and in the shadows cast against the walls I saw the form of what seemed to be a mad man. Intrigued, I followed the sound and quickly located its source. I could hear a mortal man’s crazed ranting, followed by the most intricate, complex, and passionate piano melodies, unlike anything I had heard since the death of young Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. All of the homes were dark and quiet, save for one. I was walking the streets of Vienna late at night. He was thirty years old, the night his frenzied melodies first attracted my attention. She plays the piece just as he did, making me feel sensations that I haven’t experienced for nearly two hundred years, not since the night I heard Beethoven begin his work on the Moonlight Sonata. And now the melody is playing again, the third movement with all of its agitated fire. She is in danger with me, I know this, and yet, I cannot keep her away from me. Didn’t know that she played the damned piano…the Moonlight Sonata of all pieces…She plays Beethoven’s masterpiece with a flawless, insane brilliance and a feverish intensity that makes my blood race through my ancient veins with a fiery passion that leaves me dizzy at times. I gave my word she would be safe while he was away.īut I didn’t know her then. Her future is for Marcus to decide, not me. But I am so greatly tempted by her, and I am infuriated with myself for my own weakness. I have no desire to make another vampire, to damn another person to an eternal existence such as mine. Each time the piano goes silent, she is touching me, offering herself to me as if I were the only man she had ever known.
I am beginning to believe Melina derives pleasure from tormenting me with her warm, intoxicating mortality, teasing me with her scent. If she only understood what it was she longed for, then she would know it for the curse it truly is. I have never met a mortal who yearns so deeply for immortality. She begs me with each sounding of the grandfather clock to give her the Dark Gift. I have given my word to my dear friend Marcus to keep her safe but I fear she knows that I am weakening. Melina’s feverish pounding of the Moonlight Sonata is beginning to wear on me. As I pen these words, I am sitting in my room, my flesh stone cold and without colour.