“How could they? He had not yet become what he is today and his mien was of a terrible beauty. An angel’s beauty.
“Only there is always an exception and for that reason, she became all the more precious in his cruel eyes. There was a woman of a noble family, rich beyond measure, who possessed many estates and hundreds of slaves.
“Kabiel had seen her, but instead of succumbing to his unearthly charms, she only laughed at him and returned to her home where any number of comely young men waited, hand chosen among her slaves to be her paramours of obligation, male concubines, if you will.
“My father persisted, doing his best to woo her, and in the end she allowed him into her bed. He was wrong, though, to think that she had fallen for him utterly like all the other women he had known and the following day, she ordered him away from her, demanding that he never return.
“I do not know if it was out of cruelty equal to his or, perhaps, fear of him, but his charms did nothing to dissuade her.
“Kabiel had never had anyone refuse him before. To say that this angered him is not saying enough.
“The noblewoman became his obsession and he followed her incessantly, using his power to mask his presence from her, and during this time he learned the least detail of her life.
“Among the things he learned, he came to believe he had found the reason that she had spurned him. And that reason was she had a lover and, worse still, she was quite obviously passionately in love with that man.
“He was one of her indentured servants.
“His name was Caim and he was an extraordinarily handsome young man.
“Kabiel learned to hate that young man as much as he had come to hate the woman until, one day, he devised an evil plan to deal with both of them.
“In the darkness of night, he stole into her estate and into the stable of slaves. There, he plucked Caim up and with evil casting its shadow fully over him, Kabiel bent to the young man’s throat and drew out his life’s blood while filling him with his own hatred and anger.
“The young man appeared to die. Then, the angel’s strength lifted him up in the same moment that darkness fell over Kabiel for all time.
“Sharp fangs grew out among the young man’s teeth and he was filled with a hunger that goes beyond anything a human being can possibly know. In his folly, Kabiel spirited the monster he had come to create back to the noblewoman’s bedside and without hesitation, Caim knelt to his lover and drank his fill.
“There were no more Nephilim born to Kabiel after that. Evil had taken him and he had become, truly, a fallen angel with darkness ever surrounding him.
“And that vampire, the one named Caim, created in hatred and jealousy, remains one of the most virulent and poisonous creatures this world has ever had the sorrow to know.
“My own life was elsewhere and what I did during the long ages is not always something I can pride myself upon.
“However, I came at last to understand that such creations of evil intentions have no place in this world. They can only bring ruin and must be eradicated.
“I waged war time and again against my own brothers and sisters. Eventually, I learned to reason with them. And, once most of them had passed beyond this world, there but remained the creatures my father has made...the vampires.
“Among them is the one of which I speak. Of him, I have made my enemy when he dared to visit a terrible malediction upon a young woman who taught me about myself when I thought there was nothing more for me to learn. She truly was remarkable and what Caim did to her was a crime that had to be punished.
“I pursued him without relenting and when, at last, I was able to pit myself against him one more time, I was merciless.
“I broke every bone in his worthless body. I pounded his skull flat with jagged rocks and then I cast him down in a quarry pit and half buried him under blocks of granite. I worked tirelessly to pin him into place and I did so with terrible precision.
“At the bottom of that pit, the sun would pass, ever so briefly, each day in an exact location. That window of light would come to scourge him with its fire and for him there would be no escape.
“As a vampire, he would burn. As the first created by Kabiel, he would not die outright as the sun passed over him too briefly. But it would scar him and the pain would visit upon him the punishment he was due.
“I left him there, but not before I kicked gravel over his face. What the sun did to him in the ensuing months was grotesque beyond words. The very stones sunk into his flesh each day, and each night he would heal as much as his famished body would allow. And I would come in witness and speak to him of his crime.
“At last, Kabiel took notice of his absence and, knowing our endless quarreling, he sought me out demanding answers.