ANGELUS SANGUINE by DENNIS H GORDON (best ereader under 100 .TXT) 📕

My Dearest Kathryn

It has been some time since I have had the pleasure of your company. Prior to recent events it had been my intention to remedy that oversight. I do understand that the life you have chosen demands a great deal of your time and attention and that it is difficult to extricate yourself from all of your commitments for the sake of simple social engagements. However, it is this very conundrum that has led you to overlook something of paramount importance. This unfortunate “forest for the trees” malady is all too common in those professionals who attempt to exceed their grasp in too short a time. Immersing oneself in the pursuit of academic excellence can be both blessing and a curse. Sacrifices must be made I suppose. A woman of your unique beauty and engaging intellect would be pursude at length were you not exclusively embroiled in your continuous achievements.                  In all honesty even I would have thrown my own metaphorical hat into that particular ring were it another time and place.           But the very drive that will propel you to greatness all too often blinds you to little things that go unnoticed. Though at the time of your unperceived discovery I was elated that you had more important endeavors on your mind to notice. That sentiment has changed of late and I now require you to see the ever-elusive forest.

This may well be my final correspondence so I urge you to give it all due attention as it could prove to be the greatest discovery in the history of mankind. This is not a grandiose statement, this will be a revelation I assure you.

I realize that in your time diligently earning your much-lauded double doctorate in Archeology and Paleontology your vision was understandably narrowed. You were dutifully focused on the final goal.

As well you should have been. I confess to you now that my philanthropy regarding your universities archeology department as well as my academic support and personal interest in you were not mere happenstance. In your time as a student you participated in three notable expeditions and subsequent excavations which from your point of view yielded little in the way of unique discovery.

But unwittingly you had uncovered evidence of a new species of hominid never dreamt of by your sciences. But do not feel as though you have failed as we have been here for a very long time and very few have known of our ephemeral existence. And yes, I do mean to imply that I am indeed a member of the very species to which I elude.

We surround you daily in your minds and your imaginations as we are celebrated in popular culture and common forms of media.

Yet you do not see us. That speaks less of your ignorance and more of our adaptability and the fact that in so many ways we are not so vastly different than you. A gift that has allowed us to live among you with little fear of being noticed.

Though it does often pain me the manner in which we have been represented and portrayed in all of those forms of media.

I suppose I cannot find fault with humans for the overwhelming inaccuracies regarding my kind. Throughout the centuries they have had little upon which to draw accurate conclusions save for their own inane fears and desultory imaginations.

Imagination are hallmarks of human civilization. In some ways, this seems to serve them well while in others it is often disastrous. It is curious how gross fiction can become implacable truth simply in the telling of a thing. A handful of men take it upon themselves to define the particularized details of my existence and instantly it is wholeheartedly accepted as the gospel truth by the masses who not only consume but choose to embrace such things. Much like the fiction about my kind history itself has for the most part been written by arrogant men with no true qualities or abilities to inspire through any other means so they embellish, they create, they bend the truth of what came before. In short they create fictions easily digestible by the world at large.

They are in the service of their own ideals and what they believe to be best for everyone else.  I am sure that this practice would bear glorious fruit were their ideals and intentions truly noble and forthright. Make no mistake, I do not find mankind contemptable, only certain individuals and institutions who choose to mislead. Were they more altruistic in their endeavors my words would be kinder.

But this is seldom the way of it,for man is fallible. And the vast majority seek to advance their own agendas. Most often it is intended and deliberate but I do not feel this is the case in regards to mans ignorant perceptions toward my kind.

Indeed, man’s ideas about us spring forth from his deep wells of imagination fear and tales passed from generation to generation and evolving growing and changing with each telling and with each generation. The legend grows.

Legends and oral traditions throughout the dark ages spawned a great deal of subsequent ideology that yet lingers in the hearts and minds of ancient descendants to this day. But I digress and I stray from my true purpose here.

In our valued time together you learned a great many truths about me but the time has come that you learn them all.

My true name is Astrill Brenhall and I am a member of the species Nosferatu.

Though man has adopted the far more pedestrian name of vampire.

Over the course of a very long life I have found periods of great catharsis in the ritual of recording thoughts for posterity. Accompanying this letter will be some of my journals that you may satisfy the great multitude of questions which will undoubtedly fill your inquisitive mind.

In time you will receive other evidence that you will no doubt require to prove beyond a shadow of doubt, to your colleagues and the world as a whole that what I am revealing to you is all factual. It is not lost upon me that you would suffer the incredulity and disbelief of the whole world were you to approach this with anything less than whole truth. This I will provide. I realize that your least useful personality trait will be greatly tested here but I assure you that if you find the strength to temper that dreadful impatience I have so often warned you of the reward will be immense. At some point during your journey you will invariably begin to question why I chose you to present these truths and why it is my fervent hope to make the world see something that had been so meticulously hidden for centuries. The “why” of my choice to reveal us to the world will be answered later. The more personal question, and the one that will inevitably begin to gnaw away at you first I will answer now.

I have encountered many souls throughout my life’s journeys but a mere few who exhibit such tenacity, intelligence, temerity, unfailing honesty and loyalty as a friend.

I know that I can count on you. In short, I like you. Add those things to your unassailable reputation and you are the perfect person to bring this to light. You have the respect and admiration of your peers and they will listen to you. And as I said the proof you require to maintain that professional respect and admiration will be forthcoming.

But for now, I will share with you my brief thoughts about the apparent perspective held by man regarding my kind.

Perhaps it is too much to propose the Herculean task of explaining to you what we are. For the depth of it is quite often far beyond even my own comprehension.

Rather I shall attempt to explain to you what we are not.

Firstly, we are not a group of misunderstood yet kind and loving family of misfits residing in cuddly groups in the great Northwestern United States.

Living our tragically lonely lives in a sort of protected isolation while longing for a tragically star-crossed love.

Nor have we ever been in some sort of blood feud with flea bitten mongrels of the family canis lupus that by the way (to the best of my knowledge) do not even exist. The ridiculous notion that a man could alter his very physical form into that of a four-legged beast is ludicrous.

And just as man cannot become werewolf nor has my kind ever been capable of reducing its individual mass to that of a loathsome bat. Or any other unsavory beast for that matter.

We are not doomed to turn to a pile of ash should we expose ourselves to the sun, the very thing that brings life to this world. This would indeed have made us an evolutionary dead end. Though the physiological change brought about after my transformation does instill a predilection toward nocturnal activities. But this is a natural state of a great many species.

Another glaring inaccuracy is the manner in which sensationalists choose to portray us in television, but I suppose the sexualized and romanticized personas we appear to possess on screen is no worse than that which they apply to humans as well. Movies are no better when it comes to us. I can assure you that I was personally acquainted with Abraham Lincoln and I can safely say that he did not spend his spare time "Slaying" my kind.

He was a kind and gentle man and not given to violence without provocation or necessity.

We are not so flamboyant and are rather solitary creatures as a whole.

We are also not monsters driven mad by bloodlust. Unable to control our base urges to feed upon the living. Point of fact we are far more peaceful than humans. Or rather we were. In short, we are not of supernatural origin and we do not fear garlic or the crucifix. Though it seems odd to refer to my kind in such a way as there are not enough of us left to refer to us as “we” any longer. I have not seen another of my kind since 1856.

And as you will come to know there are far worse things than werewolves and vampires in the deceptively safe little world in which you live. To reveal things with more clarity please allow me to share with you the occasion in my life in which I had finally chosen to share my long-held secret with a group of three individuals in which I had great faith. Much as I have chosen to reveal myself to you dear Kathryn. But unlike you I needed their help with a much direr predicament. One against which I had toiled endlessly for so very long. Like you all were dearly close friends to me. But it was more than that for I had not come to the decision lightly. I had spent years in their company as individuals prior to reaching the profound conclusion that they alone, of all of potential candidates, would be capable of grasping the weight of what I sought to reveal as well as what I had to ask of them. However, I bore some measure of apprehension in gathering them as a group.

Though they were all scientists and leaders of their chosen disciplines they were in no way friendly with one another. And two of them seemed diametrically opposed to one another in their views of the world.

In point of fact there had been some amount of animosity between them for years and I feared that bringing them together at one time in one place for the same purpose may create an unwelcome friction that would serve only to undermine my efforts. But my own labors in solving the problem that I