There are two reasons for my temporary vacation from the Americas: 1, they have become the seedy underbelly of revolution and all out civil war and 2, I had business to attend to at home.
Cyrilla happens to love war because she says her family started one over 1,000 years ago, however, I am not convinced that the chaos would be beneficial to either one of us. As a member of the nobility, France is not the most safe land for us either, however, my reincarnated namesake is a French merchant with ties to the new French government.
Napoleon III of France has himself mixed in with enough foreign affairs that I was able to make it to Rennet under guise of a wealthy merchant while donating significant funds to his campaign to keep myself under the watchful eye of the people. My castle miraculously stands and my lands are well kept by those human beings willing to help such a creature as myself.
Cyrilla enjoys the castle or so it seems as she stands by the window like a statue and beams at the town below. Every now and then she causes a modicum of chaos with perfidy to amuse herself but we must feed so I take little notice as long as she cleans up her messes. What power she must have to separate the good man from himself.
While here we've already been called upon to separate a minister or local powerhouse from himself enough for Napoleon III and his forces to take control. It is no wonder they keep us around. Rebellion is all about the money you have to rebel and Cyrilla and myself find it humorous that such a man as Napoleon III dresses himself as a man of the people only to demand help from such forces as they could never understand.
Our only true foes are gypsies that wander through now and then claiming to be slaughterers of kindred who can release people from their oppressors but the people neither know what kindred are or listen to the poisoned words of a gypsy.
The French involve themselves in a Mexican civil war while the Americans involve themselves in another civil war. When the struggle of mankind to kill its own is at its height: what a lovely time for a kindred vacation. The struggle and civil unrest here in France alone is enough for us to feed mercilessly on the people while no one takes notice of those disposed of.
France in Spring is gorgeous. I see it only through darkness now but remember it in the light. I have been a kindred for 244 years but for 26 years before that, I saw this land as rich and fertile and it still produces liquid wealth from the ground. Not liquid in the way that it's fluid in nature but rather in the way that it produces the disposable asset of great fortune. Cyrilla and myself want for nothing and take whatever we want while this country devolves into power struggles as most of human history has.
Tomorrow night, we leave for the Mediterranean, crossing several auspicious European treasures to get to Cyrilla's home of Greece. She loves the French countryside and northwestern France but I can see a part of her light up when she hears me talk of the sea bound islands of Greece. How I love to please her.
Business drones on in its weary ways and has made me grow so tired of deeds and papers and documents of ownership. It seems as though in their quest to separate themselves from Monarchical society, human beings have complicated their lives and given way to even greater kings of money and undisputed power. It is one thing to be under a Monarch who allows you little courtesies provided you provide for him but another when a despot enslaves you to his own wealth. I see the system changing and changing in my favor as I know what to do but I pity mankind as he has no idea the future he is building for himself.
With my highly empathic nature, I feel their sorrow but never do I pity those who make their own choices knowingly wrong. Cyrilla sees futures and tells me how these grounds are stained with blood. She walks the pastures and screams in her sleep when we share our daily coffin and I know we must depart this land soon.
...
Sailing into Athens, I see the cliffs of an ancient society. High cliffs with homes built into them in a plateau style landscape. Her eyes sparkle with the love of such a tiny land. I tell her that the Chateau Rennet doubles the land of this small area but she simply smiles at me and uses the combination of Perfidy and her enigmatic sight to show me the magnificence of a great Greek past.
Her separation from humanity during this time makes me think she must have been as a god to these people. She changes her elaborate French dressing to no more than an ornately draped sheet just before we depart the boat. This is the first time I have seen her without clothes and although as a human I would have lusted after her curves winding like the cliffs of Athens and her areolas as small and erect as the tiny houses on the cliffs, my higher minded kindred brain sees an aureole over her naked form like the Venus' rival. Her skin is as white as the statues as well; so much so that one would not have known, were she standing still, the difference between her and the marble of those statues.
"The Kallisti are said to have started the Trojan War, my love," She remarks with glee as I stand by the base wooden door staring at her donning her gown. "We are more than the goddesses ever were and twice the fluidity."
Cyrilla, unlike myself, never maintained any ties to Greece. She explained to me that she was never a royal and never a commoner either. She transcends the human understanding of class or existence altogether. Whatever she is, she is like an angel in my visage and in her presence as well.
When we depart the boat, I notice we are followed through the streets by unknown assailants. We stay at the finest hotels to remain public and our habits, although they spark the interest of local people do not threaten them in any way. We must be far more cautious as Greece is not nearly the warring state as France is or even the nearby Turkey.
The nights roll on in magnificence and the beauty of this land grows on me until one night that I will never forget.
May 18th, 1864: The night is crisp and clear and I watch Cyrilla from our balcony as she leaves our hotel to wander free for the night. As she gets to the opposite side of the street, she is set upon by 4 black shadows who grab her and begin to take her off. I leapt from the balcony and set upon feeding on two of them while she tore apart the other two with ease. My blood potency was high at this point due to our feeding on each other from time to time and exchanging her ancient power so we were easily able to rip these assailants apart; however upon tasting their blood, we were a bit taken a back.
I noticed that this blood was that of the kindred. More than that, the tiny bit of blood that I had managed to sample of Arabella De Gall the last time I had met up with her, during the rise to power of Augusto Vidal, had given me the ability to know that this blood was that of the Lancea Sanctum: the vicious papal monarchs of the kindred world.
It was of this instant that I realized our European fun had come to an end. I had no idea that the workings of Cyrilla's capture had just begun. We made haste and prepared to leave Europe. We made our leave over land due to the wild nature of the Mediterranean and left Europe from the inconspicuous port of Newquay in the south of Great Britain in August of 1865 with all papers and lands secure in France.
My regret now, as I look back, is that it took us too long to leave that wretched continent...
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