Un-Undead

"Live fast, die young, and enjoy a beautiful corpse for all eternity!" The party toasted, clinking their glasses together in the book filled study. The furniture had been shoved out of the center of the room, plush chairs lined the walls interspersed with side tables, a globe and even the great desk and tables of ornately carved and highly polished wood.

The revelers were all richly dressed in ornate fashions of yesteryear. Young men and women, barely out of their childhood in clothing out of style when their parents were their age, and all had their faces painted as ornate and somewhat abstract skulls. Smudges of which ended up on their wine glasses after the toast.

Observing them, standing alone in the shadowed corner in clothing that was even more out of style than that of the infants before her was a woman whose face was unpainted, and whose hand held no glass. The partygoers could feel her watching, knew who she was, and yet not one would look directly at her, though she was the entire reason for the gathering. It's difficult to look death in the face. she thought to herself. They still think they're immortal.

Successful vampires are patient. They know they have time on their side. Time to corrupt the children of your enemies, or their grandchildren. They also know how to entice those children with promises of eternal beauty. So it is that the children of the rich and powerful join these clubs of the pre-undead. Sometimes a few of them are even turned into vampires. Most are merely charmed, used, and tied to the vampire for the rest of their lives, acting as the vampire's puppets in the daylight.