“I look for ghosts; but none will force

Their way to me. ‘Tis falsely said

That there was ever intercourse

Between the living and the dead.”

— William Wordsworth

The spectral form known as Lilith, dressed all in milky white, crouched among briar and bush a mere stone’s toss from the crumbling walls of a nearby castle’s ruins. The beautiful pale wisp of revenge waited.

She had, in fact, been waiting for well over two hundred years, though time was a concept which no longer held much meaning for her.

And fear, hunger, dread, boredom, exhaustion, and terror… these mortal distractions were all just echoes of a distant corporeal life which rarely clouded her thoughts in her present semi-tangible guise.

One desire, however, had remained. One feeling had comforted her down through the passage of history. One mission gave her joy at least one dozen times over the past couple of centuries. And tonight, yes tonight, the stars themselves promised further appeasement.

Lilith hungered.