If you were one of us, you’d be a candle burning in the dark. They would spot you without fail. Don’t you know the old ones destroy the young ones out of hand? Didn’t your beloved Louis explain that to you?

I will bear witness. I will stand here with my arms outstretched. And when the sun rises, my death shall confirm the miracle.

Je suis Armand. Je suis le chef de ton clan.

Dear, this is a Stein.

Still... Amadeo had a skill. And if a friend wondered into town, I was occasionally... donated. Meatier in the forearms, but then again this was... seven years before I was stricken with illness, before I was turned, and imbued with my powers.

Claudia? Can you respectfully find another object to buff?

That is no mystery unto itself, the making of Daniel. Loneliness will always inevitably press us to such things. But I was a firm believer that those we make ourselves will always despise us for it.

It was all true, what he told you. But no one will ever believe it. And you will go mad in time from this knowledge. That's what always happens. But you're not mad yet.

The story begins a long time ago. Maybe I've never truly realized how long ago, until this very moment. You listen and write. Let me be the one to cry and to rant and to rail.

Can I just read it?

You've remembered what you did to yourself in San Francisco. And you're angry that I erased it. You've no right to be. You asked me to do it.

There you go again. So irrepressibly human. You overestimate me or underestimate me. Seldom do you ever hit the mark.

I was not a child. Rather I was some spirit like unto a child—naive and maniacal in my pursuit of certain themes.

I was the worst of leaders, that is, the indifferent cold leader who strikes fear in the hearts of everyone but bothers to love no one.