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Our acts our angels are, for good or ill, our fatal shadows that walk by us still.

There were no vampires of note in Western literature until about the 18th century. But they tell us where we park our anxieties, whether its over-powerful women, death or damnation. We make our own monsters.

Vampires are so sexy and powerful - they're so otherworldly; they have eternal life and youth.

There is a certain swagger with vampires.

There's no set-in-stone way to be a vampire, especially with the evil ones.

Vampires are handy characters, as they can do double duty as monster/villains and the classic, misunderstood romantic hero.

Before vampires were aesthetically appealing, they were physical anomalies and ostracized outsiders whom we banished to the dark, and they didn't have the appeal that they do now.

It's easy to look at the vampires as a metaphor for any feared or misunderstood group. It's also easy to look at them as a metaphor for a shadow organization that says one thing and has a completely different agenda on their mind, and anybody who gets in their way, they just get rid of them. Does that sound familiar?

Evil is the shadow of angel. Just as there are angels of light, support, guidance, healing and defense, so we have experiences of shadow angels. And we have names for them: racism, sexism, homophobia are all demons - but they're not out there.

I've always been partial to werewolves, perhaps because there's a desperation to their plight that resonates.