Embrace the Night

Page 185



changes, while he had remained the same.

Upon rising from his fifty-five year rest, he had spent weeks reading newspapers and magazines from the world over in an effort to bring himself up to date. Only when he felt he had learned enough to function in this new age had he left Salamanca. He could not bring himself to stay in the castle now that Sara was gone.

His first instinct had been to go home to Italy, but nothing there had seemed familiar; the village where he had grown up no longer existed, and so he had left there, as well, and come to the United States, where there would be nothing to remind him of Sara, or of the life he had left behind so many years ago.

He had been a part of this new and modern world for less than a year, and already he didn't like it. Everything seemed transient, rushed, tawdry. Twentieth-century man seemed to be in a terrible rush. Food was cooked in minutes in microwave ovens, clothes no longer needed to be ironed, airplanes carried passengers from one end of the world to the other in a matter of hours. Everyone seemed in a hurry all the time, almost as if they were afraid to slow down for fear they would realize they had sacrificed quality for quantity, serenity for chaos.

There were, however, a few things the modern age had wrought that he liked very much. Television was one of them. Sports cars were another. One of the first things he had done upon arriving in the United States was to buy an automobile. He had learned to drive as effortlessly as he learned everything. He loved the speed, the thrill of driving a sleek sports car at a hundred miles an hour down a narrow ribbon of road in the dark of night, the countryside whipping past in a blur.

And yet, as much as he loved fast cars, there was no spiritual communion between machine and man as there was between horse and rider. The dark red Jaguar didn't nuzzle his arm or whinny a soft welcome. He didn't find the same pleasure behind the wheel of the car that he found on the back of his horse, and yet he loved the soft purr of the Jag's engine, the feel of the wind in his face as he roared down the highway.

He had been shocked by the change in fashion. Women paraded around in scandalously short pants and tops that barely covered their private parts, flaunting their bodies. Even dresses revealed more than they covered. And hair styles—he had been shocked the first time he had seen a woman with her hair cut above her ears. The fact that it was dyed a bright orange had hardly registered.

It had taken less time to grow accustomed to the change in men's attire. His clothing was sadly outdated, his flowing cloak no longer in style. He glanced down at the black T-shirt and snug-fitting jeans he now wore. He had to admit there was a certain comfort to these clothes that he liked, though they seemed shoddy when compared to the fine wools and linens he had once been accustomed to.

Yes, the world had changed. At first, he had been sorely tempted to go to ground again, certain that a 493-year-old vampire would never be able to adapt to such a fast-paced life.

But then he had discovered there were hordes of homeless people living on the city streets, men and women who would never be missed. A human buffet of sorts, he mused with a wry grin. Had he been so inclined, he could have killed and feasted every night without fear of reprisal.

He turned his back on the view and stared through the sliding glass door that led into the dark house beyond. Dark, he thought, like his life.

She had been dead for more than half a century, yet he felt her loss as keenly as if she had passed away