From Dracula to Lestat to Mona the Vampire, the thirst for vampire novels is unquenchable. They've been examined from every conceivable angle, done to death as it were, and yet literature about them proliferates at greater speed than vampires themselves could ever hope to. So what is it about books featuring the undead that holds us so much in thrall?

I have yearned for tonight for so long,
In nights dark cloak I wait.
How can what we want be wrong?
When all we feel is love not hate.

Here within the stable block,
I nestled in the hay.
Whilst listening for the churchyard clock,
To chime the hours away.

I felt not fearful of the night,
Or anything within.
For he had given me clearer sight,
Of nature and her kin.

Though he was only a humble man,
And I a highborn lady.
We loved as no two others can,
For that was our sweet destiny.

I've traveled a long way to talk vampires with Dan Matei Agathon, Romania's minister of tourism. As I wait in his cramped anteroom with its tattered wood trim and 1960s-era vertical blinds, assistants flutter to and fro, one of them bearing boxes that look like gifts for some visiting dignitary.

July 14, 2008 (Prague Daily Monitor) -- Archaeologists have uncovered a 4000-year-old grave in Mikulovice, east Bohemia, with remains of what might have been considered a vampire at the time, Nova TV has reported. The experts made the terrifying find within their research of a burial site from the Early Bronze Age.

From without I see a Dreamer,
From within a crying babe.
From without I see the Creator,
From within I see a knave.
From without I see a monster,
From within a budding babe.
From without I am a demon,
From within I'm goddess gave.
What am I?

Raevynn
October 14, 2001