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With another sigh, I turned to my computer Naturally, the screen was covered in pop-up ads I sat inall the little s Eventually I ine I shot down a few more pop-ups and then typed in one word

Va time, of course When the results ca froround othic cos site - Vampires A-Z I waited i closed each ad that flashed across the screen Finally the screen was finished - si Two quotes greeted hout the vast shadoorld of ghosts and deure so dreaded and abhorred, yet dight with such fearful fascination, as the vahost nor demon, but yet who partakes the dark natures and possesses the ue Summers

If there is in this world a well-attested account, it is that of the va: official reports, affidavits of well-known people, of surgeons, of priests, of istrates; the judicial proof is most complete And with all that, who is there who believes in vampires? - Rousseau

The rest of the site was an alphabetized listing of all the different hout the world The first I clicked on, the Danag, was a Filipino va taro on the islands long ago Theworked with humans for many years, but the partnership ended one day when a wo the taste so much that it drained her body coh the descriptions, looking for anything that sounded familiar, let alone plausible It seemed that most vampire myths centered around beautiful women as demons and children as victims; they also seeh ive men an excuse for infidelity Many of the stories involved bodiless spirits and warnings against improper burials There wasn’t much that sounded like the movies I’d seen, and only a very few, like the Hebrew Estrie and the Polish Upier, ere even preoccupied with drinking blood

Only three entries really caughtwho could appear as a beautiful, pale-skinned hu and fast it could ht, and one other, the Stregoni benefici

About this last there was only one brief sentence

Stregoni benefici: An Italian vaoodness, and a mortal enemy of all evil vampires

It was a relief, that one s hundreds that claih, there was little that coincided with Jacob’s stories or ue in my mind as I’d read and carefully coth, beauty, pale skin, eyes that shift color; and then Jacob’s criteria: blood drinkers, enemies of the olf, cold-skinned, and immortal There were very few myths that matched even one factor

And then another problem, one that I’d remembered from the small number of scary movies that I’d seen and was backed up by today’s reading - vampires couldn’t come out in the daytime, the sun would burn them to a cinder They slept in coffins all day and caravated, I snapped off the cos down properly Throughe inwith ed on the doorstep of the town of Forks - and the entire sodden Olyet out of the house, but there was nowhere I wanted to go that didn’t involve a three-day drive I pulled on my boots anyway, unclear where I was headed, and went downstairs I shrugged intothe weather and sto yet I ignoredacross Charlie’s yard toward the ever-encroaching forest It didn’t take long till I was deep enough for the house and the road to be invisible, for the only sound to be the squish of the damp earth under my feet and the sudden cries of the jays

There was a thin ribbon of a trail that led through the forest here, or I wouldn’t risk wandering on my own like this My sense of direction was hopeless; I could get lost in s The trail wound deeper and deeper into the forest, mostly east as far as I could tell It snaked around the Sitka spruces and the heuely knew the names of the trees aroundthem out to me from the cruiserin earlier days There were many I didn’t know, and others I couldn’t be sure about because they were so covered in green parasites

I followed the trail as long as er at myself pushed me forward As that started to ebb, I slowed A few drops of moisture trickled down from the canopy aboveto rain or if it was sih in the leaves abovetheir way back to the earth A recently fallen tree - I kneas recent because it wasn’t entirely carpeted in ainst the trunk of one of her sisters, creating a sheltered little bench just a few safe feet off the trail I stepped over the ferns and sat carefully,sure my jacket was between the damp seat and my clothes wherever they touched, and leanedtree

This was the wrong place to have coo? The forest was deep green and far too ht’s dreaer the sound ofThe birds were quiet, too, the drops increasing in frequency, so it her than my head, now that I was seated, and I knew someone could walk by on the path, three feet away, and not see me

Here in the trees it was much easier to believe the absurdities that eed in this forest for thousands of years, and all the ends of a hundred different lands seereen haze than they had in my clear-cut bedroom