Kane was of the opinion that the world was in an unprecedented golden age. A time of wonders. Never before, in all human history, had there ever been such an era of plenty. You know, for a vampire. Sure, the sun was still just as much of a bother as always. But fire was so much rarer than it used to be. Back in the day, everybody had a fire going in their house most of the time, and there were candles and oil lamps aplenty. And then came gas stoves, and everybody carrying a lighter around because just about everybody smoked. But these days most people had electric stoves, or just microwaves. The heating was electric, the lights were electric, and smoking was getting rarer with every passing year. Hell, even the stoners seemed to prefer edibles nowadays. And there were truly so many people! In a city of five thousand, a person going missing every week or so was a cause for panic. In a city of five million, it was barely even a statistical blip. The vampire population had remained fairly stable for the last few centuries, but the human population had skyrocketed. It was like the whole world was an all-you-can-eat buffet! But the most important thing was just how faithless the world was. Faith, after all, was anathema to vampires. It pushed them back, weakened them, it could even burn them like the sun if it was strong enough. But so many people these days believed in nothing. They didn’t believe in God, they didn’t believe in hope, they sure as hell didn’t believe in themselves! In fact, plenty of people were so utterly dispossessed of faith that they didn’t even believe in the sanctity of their own homes! And that was useful, for a vampire. Because the belief that your home was your own was the whole reason a vampire needed an invitation to enter. Picking the lock of the apartment was child’s play. The building was old and poorly maintained, and the lock clearly hadn’t been replaced for at least seventy years. Cautiously poking a hand into the open doorway, Kane grinned when it crossed the threshold without resistance. Striding through the tiny apartment, he quickly made his way to the bedroom… And found that the forty year old man living here was still quite awake. That was the one small issue with the modern age. People didn’t have the common courtesy to sleep during the hours when vampires were awake. The slightly portly man looked up, then practically leapt out of his gaming chair. “Who the hell are you?” Kane grinned, his fangs gleaming even in the low light of the room. Nobody was going to care about the noise, after all. Not in a neighbourhood like this. As Kane’s fangs extended and his face shifted into an inhuman rictus, the man backed up until he hit a shelf full of figurines and collectibles. As the vampire approached his cornered prey, he couldn’t help but gloat. “Stupid little faithless human, all alone in the dark of the night. Where is your God now?” The man’s eyes grew wide, and his arm snaked out to grab something. Nonplussed, Kane watched as the man’s hand shot forward, grasping… a figurine of a brown-haired anime girl dressed in a playboy bunny outfit holding an electric guitar? The heavy-set nerd’s hand trembled as he thrust out the scantily clad figurine, but there was a strange gleam in his eye. Still puzzled, Kane lunged forward… and stopped. He couldn’t push past the little plastic figurine. Seeing this, the middle-aged man’s eyes widened, and a manic grin appeared on his face. “I knew it! It’s real! Anime is real! Back, beast! You are nothing before the power of Haruhi-sama! By the Dancho, the Kyon and the Data Overmind I command thee begone!” Kane reared back as the man’s belief in whatever nonsense he was spouting flared up like a raging flame. To his vampiric sight, the barely visible squiggly symbol on the man’s faded t-shirt seemed to glow with the power of faith. He had no idea what bullshit this nerd was going on about, but in his eyes Kane recognized the steely gaze of a newly awakened zealot. And before such conviction, even a vampire as old as Kane could do nothing but turn tail and flee. It was the night after the incident with the nerd, and Kane was hungry. Breaking into yet another dinghy apartment, he quickly realized that it smelled heavily of cheap magazines and a single woman. A very single woman, in fact. A very single woman who enjoyed herself far too much and didn’t shower nearly enough, in Kane’s opinion. If he was less hungry, the funk of the apartment might have been enough to make him reconsider. But beggars can’t be choosers. The apartment was practically overflowing with manga. He had no idea what they were about, because while he was fluent in twelve languages, Japanese was not one of them. They all seemed to feature a lot of very handsome men on the covers, though. That might be a good sign. After all, Kane was a very handsome man himself, and sometimes women were so taken with the idea of handsome vampires that they didn’t even resist. Unsurprisingly, he found the woman in her bedroom, lying on top of the bed in nothing but her underwear. She was reading some cheap-looking, thin little magazine and giggling to herself in rather lecherous tone of voice. Deciding that a bit of theatrics was in order, Kane put on his deepest, most sultry voice and spoke. “Come to me, my sweet young thing. Let me show you the wonders of the night.” The woman jolted upright and turned to face him. As she took in his appearance, her eyes grew wide. “Are you… a vampire?” “Why, yes I am. My name is Kane, and I am a creature of blood and darkness.” “Oh wow… That’s so cool! I love… Wait! Are you here to bite me?” “There is no reason for concern, my sweet.” Kane lied through his pointy teeth. “You will find my bite to be quite… pleasant.” “Oh, come on! Absolutely not! That is such a waste!” “…what?” “Hot vampire men should be biting cute boys! Like in ‘Yoru no Akai Hana’ volume three! Vampire men biting women is so boring!” “…what?” Kane repeated, feeling like he had completely lost the plot. The woman started rooting around in her pile of magazines, soon grabbing one with a cover that featured a man with pointy teeth and unusually large hands caressing the cheek of a boy that looked to be of middle school age at most. She opened the magazine and turned its pages towards him. “Look! Like this! ‘Yosuke, your scent beguiles me. Your virgin blood is rich and pungent. I must have you.’ ‘Arashi-sama… You were a vampire all this time?’ ‘Yes, Yosuke. For two thousand years I have stalked the night. But never have I scented a boy so delicious as you.’” As the young woman kept reading aloud, Kane realized that her finger was trailing along each speech bubble as she translated the words. But she wasn’t even looking at the page! She was staring straight into his eyes as she recited the awful, hackneyed, shameless dialogue like it was holy scripture. Even from six feet away, he felt the strength of her convictions pushing against him. “Impossible! What… What is this power?” The woman lowered the book and seemed to stare directly into his soul. “It is the power of Yaoi, the only true love in this world! I may be a rotten girl, but my faith is pure and my convictions are absolute. I believe with all my heart that true love can bloom between a handsome man with a mighty rod and a pretty boy with a tight…” But Kane wasn’t listening. He had long since turned to flee, the force of the girl’s faith searing his skin even as he ran. As the following night fell, Kane was almost delirious with hunger. Healing from the burning touch of unshakable belief took a lot out of him, and he had been hungering to begin with. With trembling hands, he forced his way into the first dilapidated apartment he could find, relieved beyond words that he was able to enter. His face transformed into a monstrous snarl as he stumbled his way towards the scent of a human. The ratty-looking man spotted him at once, clearly panicking as Kane staggered towards him. He was mumbling something, but Kane didn’t even care… “Oh shit! Vampire! That has to be a vampire! What works on vampires… Stakes? I don’t have any wooden sticks in here… Decapitation? No, my sword collection is in the other room. Fire… nope. Garlic? Shit, I’m allergic! Um, crosses… Yeah right… Holy water… Holy water!” Weakened as he was, Kane was barely able to react as the man grabbed a jar from his desk. He saw that the label on the lid said ‘gamer girl bath water’, but that was the last thing he knew before the lid came off and he was doused in the lukewarm fluid. The touch of the slightly clouded water burned like fire, and agony spread across his twitching form in the moments before he was burned down to nothing but ash. Not much later, a five star review appeared on a certain online store page, posted by a user going by the name PayPig69. It read as follows: “I always knew that my oshi was a goddess, but now I have proof! Her holy water made short work of the vampire that attacked me the other night. Truly a great product. I’m buying a dozen more!”