I am the Vampire Celeste. I was an actress at Le Th��tre des Vampires until its unfortunate burning by Louis de Pointe du Lac in 1864. I was made by Santiago, the real star of the theater, despite the fact that Armand was acknowledged as our leader. Maybe I am biased. After all, I loved Santiago.

I love him still.

When the theater burned, I was out on the street, quite nearby. I had left earlier that evening in somewhat of a rage. Santiago and I had argued again. We did that often. Now I hardly remember what we had crossed words over. It was very close to dawn when I returned to the theater, but before I reached it I knew that something was wrong. The smell of oil, of burning wood, was faint but it was sharp enough for my vampiric senses to detect. Alarm raced through me. What was happening? It was so close to dawn and I knew that many of the others had no alternative daylight hiding places besides the bowels of the theater. I had another resting spot -- Santiago had encouraged me to do so, and I knew that my dearest friend Estelle did as well, and Santiago, Armand...but many of the others were young, were not very clever.

Still, I didn�t know if they had gotten out? Screams, I could hear screams in the silence of the street. No mortals had yet come to gather. And I was panicking, frozen, not sure what to do.

All at once the blaze became apparent and I knew I would have to flee or risk the daylight. I could not enter the theater to look for my friends. There was nothing I could do to save anyone besides myself. But I had to know how this had happened, who was there. I cried out with my mind to the others, screaming for them to meet me tomorrow night, to find me, that I would be at the P�re-Lachaise Cemetery at sunset, but it was a wild message sent, another scream lost among the many that howled up from the bowels of Le Th��tre des Vampires. I flung my mind out with all my being, searching for a vision of Santiago, of what might have happened to him. As maker and fledgling, our minds were closed to each other, but I prayed that someone, anyone had seen him.

I almost threw myself into the blaze when the vision came. I knew at once that it was the mind of Louis that I was reading...but had not Armand had him sealed him in the wall just last night? I knew not how Louis had escaped, but I saw what he had seen since. The ashes of Claudia and Madeleine blowing to dust in the wind. His empty heartbreak. His grim determination for vengeance. And Santiago, mocking him, laughing. The swinging blade of a scythe. Santiago�s head flying in a arc through the air, Louis kicking it.

Dead? My maker, my lover?

No... No... NO!

Before I could crack, could descend into insanity and denial myself, I saw Armand�s coach. It came down the street at breakneck speed. I saw Louis emerge from the burning theater, saw Armand pull him inside the coach.

Betrayal.

Murder.

Santiago -- my love. Dead?

No...

It would have been so easy to throw myself into the theater then, like a widow onto a funeral pyre. It would have been so easy to let the sun take me. So easy.

Yet I knew that were the situation reversed, Santiago would by no means have died for the loss of me. He probably wouldn�t have even done so for Armand. I swallowed back a bitter moment recalling that they had been lovers before I even met them. And, I told myself, Santiago would have wanted me to live. I turned and fled.

My hiding place was an old family crypt in P�re-Lachaise, and there I went, meaning to rise at sunset and find those of my brothers and sisters who might have escaped, might have survived the fire that utterly destroyed our home, our theater, our lair. But I believed Santiago was dead, and my grief sent me instead into a sleep which lasted for thirty years.

It was not until over a hundred years after my awakening that I discovered that Santiago was indeed still alive, and not until now, at the beginning of the Twenty-First Century, that I have rejoined him along with my dearest friend from those nights of Le Th��tre des Vampires, Estelle.

Now we are together again, and once more, our star will rise.

Of that, I have no doubt.