Immortal Beloved

1.

Curia of Pompey, Rome: March 15th, 44 BC

The hunger gnaws within me – deep, rumbling up from within. The blood lust is beginning to rise – a fervor pitch, screaming in my ears – so loud that I can hardly control it. I close my eyes, stealing away to the darkness and the words of my father:

“We may be cursed – but we are not animals. You can control the hunger. Focus the hunger and you will control it.”

Father taught me to hunt discriminately – never the innocents and only those that deserved their fate. The herd was thick for the thinning amongst the ‘optimates’, the ‘best of men’ – the leaders within the Roman Senate; and I hunger.

Within these marbled walls I was known as Lucius Mestrius Plutarchus – a historian, biographer and sometime essayist. These trades served me well as I became intimate with the citizens of Rome; their walls held no secret that I would not become aware of. Their lives became an open book to me, their fears, their love and, most of all, their penchant for evil and greed. Especially among the Senators who served the people to only line their own pockets. True, there were exceptions among them, Suetonius, Brutus and Tillius were special favorites of mine. It was through their help that I stand here now, in the grand hallway of the Theatre of Pompey, surrounded by the entire Senate, waiting for the passing of Julius Caesar, waiting for the moment to feed as the Senate plots to assassinate him.