February 24, 1890 – Rio de Janeiro

     Lent begins tomorrow. For the humans here, it means giving up their biggest pleasures. Forty days of prayer and fasting. Every year, I struggle. Forty days without blood. My skin grows ice cold, pale, and appears sunken. My throat burns until my body trembles from the pain. Crying silently as the monster inside claws at my will, I find myself muttering the same unheard prayers for death to take me.    

     Our newest vampire wonders why I suffer through it at all. And as I watch the humans dancing in their brightly colored clothes, celebrating only the way humans can, I explain it to him. Forty days worth of blood will spill on Easter, quenching an insatiable thirst. I will bask in crimson, letting it wash away my pain, and I gorge like a glutton until exorbitant strength seeps from every pore.