MONSTER LOVE (c) MaryJanice Davidson, 2002 Prologue From the private papers of Richard Will, Ten Beacon Hill, Boston, Massachusetts. "Becoming a vampire was the best thing that ever happened to me. The very, very best. Which is why I don't understand all the literature, how the vampires are usually these moody fellows who rue the day they ever got bitten, who pray for some illiterate European to plant a stake through their ribs. Rue the day? If the mob hadn't torched my killer the next night, I'd have kissed his feet. I'd even have kissed his behind! "After all, what else was there for me? Take over the farm when my father died? No, thank you. Farming is back-breaking work for very little reward, and even less respect. And I could hardly endure being in the same room with my father, much less work for him the rest of my life. (Punch first and punch second, that was my dear departed papa's motto.) "Lie about my age to join the army, and get my head blown off? (All so sixty years later we can ignore the Holocaust and pretend the Germans are good guys?) But back then, if you didn't fight you were a coward. Of course, two wars later the young men were encouraged to go to Canada, to avoid responsibilities to their country. If they