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– Everyone has a student from the junior year sitting on their neck.

– And you?

– And me.

– Who's sitting on your neck?

– A third-year student girl.

– How's your relationship?

– It's not. The only weird thing about this situation is…" I started, but suddenly stopped talking. Should I tell my father about my strange state of mind since I'd met Viper? Maybe he could explain what the hell was happening to me.

– The scent of her blood," I said instead, not wanting to share my weakness with anyone. – I've never smelled blood so beautiful. It's so heavy and tart that it makes it hard for me to focus when I'm sitting next to her.

I learnt long ago to control myself and temper my predatory instincts. Now any scent, even one that incited me to kill, was not dangerous to me. But Viper blood beckoned to me like no other in all the years of my long life. I mentally pictured drinking that marvellous blood and feeling the sea breeze on my face. But where would that sea breeze come from if Viper was born and raised in Brno?

– Does her blood taste as good as its flavour?

– I didn't kill her.

Father's testing gaze was like he was trying to scan my soul. Talking about Viper interested him far more than I'd realised.

– If you want her blood so badly, drink it, then you'll get those thoughts out of your head," my father advised me.

– Have you ever experienced anything like that? – I asked.

– All of us, at least once, suddenly feel obsessed with a certain flavour. In such a situation, you should kill the victim so that you don't feel constrained. Kill her and forget about this nonsense.

– That's what I'll do," I said to get my father behind me.

Kill Viper and drink her blood. Kill her. How easy it is. How easy it would be to get rid of this problem. How sweet this moment will be. The moment I'm free of it. Isn't that the answer to my question?

But when I imagined killing this girl, this elf, I felt uneasy. Something in me rebelled against even the thought of it. This decision would be horrible. If I killed Viper, and this fragile girl was gone – the mystery would be gone. What if her death was in vain? What if I never find the answer and I'm tormented because I was wrong to do what I did? No. Viper has to live. I won't kill her just because talking to her has put me in this abnormal state. Yes, she's only human, but if Viper is to lose her life, it won't be by my hand. Because I had no idea how I was going to live knowing that I had robbed the world of such a fragile, wonderful flower with a strange name like Viper.

"I'm getting a little lazy and thinking about that mortal too much!" – I thought to myself irritably. I was angry with myself and with Viper because she had been on my mind ever since I'd first met her. I could suppress them, block them out, but they still found tricks and secret passages in my mind and broke free. Never in my long life had I thought of mortals at all – they were of no interest to me. Their mundane short lives taught them nothing, and I was sure that all mortals were stupid and ignorant. And I had never thought about a woman for so long. Much less a mortal. Mentally tracing my life's journey and remembering my temporary admiration and brief attraction to one of the vampires that was so much prettier, smarter, more perfect than Viper, I chuckled derisively, laughing at myself and my obsession with some mortal.

Where the hell had my morbid interest in this girl come from? Unhealthy, because I'd only ever thought of humans as a source of food before. And I certainly didn't care what impression I might make on them, whether I hurt them, frightened them, made them hate me and think I was a son of a bitch. The predator sees no beauty in his prey, except that he will soon satisfy his hunger with it.

So what's wrong with me? Am I destructive? Is that why I'm attracted to Viper? What do I do if that's really the case? What if my infatuation with this mortal turns into something more? Then I'll be finished. We only fall in love once. For life. We are either eternally happy, or we give our passion in vain, living in the agony of unrequited love, unable to cure our heart with another love, because it will be given to only one life for the rest of our lives.

No, I will not go to that extreme and love a mortal. It would be impossible. The torment of love is not my lot.

So what do I do? What do I do to get the image of Viper out of my mind? How do I get rid of these conflicting feelings for a predator? There's something strange going on in my soul. But what? There's no name for it. You can't go any further, you can't enjoy the company of a mortal. You cannot allow yourself to think of her, allow yourself to savour her beauty, and her voice. Her existence. She is nothing but a food source… Damn, it's so easy to say all this! However, I haven't even tried to carry out my own plans to banish Viper from my head and force my own thoughts into submission. I'm sure I'll have the willpower to give her up later, in case I feel like I'm infatuated with Viper beyond measure. I will simply forget about her and erase her image, but until that moment of collapse comes, I will try to understand these feelings, to comprehend this mystery, to try to solve the riddle of this mortal.

It will be a kind of experiment for me to find out how strong I am and how much my mind obeys me. Just seeing Viper. Just talking to her, hearing her voice, and looking into her bright dark eyes that always held a slight sadness and some reticence. I felt there was something beautiful behind that barrier, something that could only be unravelled when I succeeded in destroying that wall.

Viper's soul is like a pearl languishing in a hard shell at the bottom of an ocean trough.

Cedric Morgan's behaviour discouraged me. Well, how could one understand this strange guy? One minute he is insulting, the next he is apologising! Then he is cold and angry, calling me a coward, accusing me of cowardice, and suddenly he seeks to meet me! He even apologised twice, and, as if to make amends for his rudeness, shared something very personal with me. When Cedric talked about Charles Baudelaire, I felt a kindred spirit in him. I was inexpressibly pleased by Morgan's reasoning, for I had reasoned the same way myself. He put into words what I felt when I read the gloomy works of this great French poet.

What a pity that I do not speak French, so that, like Cedric, I could feel the true beauty and original thoughts of Baudelaire, not distorted by the Czech translation! But, even in a very distorted form, his poems remained beautiful.

Cedric is a romantic. It can't be otherwise. He who favours Goethe, Petrarch and Baudelaire cannot be a mere detached connoisseur without experiencing the force and power of the genius of these authors. They can only be understood by one in whose soul there is romance. When I saw how engrossed Cedric was in our conversation about poetry and literature, I realised that he was seriously interested in it. But while we were almost unanimous on poetry, our tastes in literature were monumentally different: Cedric liked serious, heavy literature, while I preferred the light and captivating genre of vampire novels.

"Well, now he thinks I'm thoughtless… Who cares what he thinks, though?" I thought with distaste. – I thought grudgingly, but in my heart I admitted to myself that it was important to know what he thought. What could I hope for, though? In Cedric's eyes, I looked stupid, or even shallow. But, God, he's so strange. And he's so persuasive. I was determined to refuse his help, and I had already said goodbye to him, but tomorrow I'm meeting him in the library!

That's absurd. Just a short conversation that cleared up so much.