The night i went to see the Prince, the moon hung over mount Olympus like a clipped fingernail. I remember because i stopped on the bridge of the river Pineios.

I watched the water coming down from the mountains, cloudy from the rains, and i thought that blood flows the same way which is always downward.

Prince Alexandros Komninos lives in a mansion near the Cemetery. Fitting for the leader of those who feed on the people. He was waiting for me in the darkness with a glass of blood in his hand. In the ten years since i met him, i've never seen him sit in a room with any source of light.

Dimitrios, he said, his voice like a rusted door, the Gangrel are complaining. They say your chantry gives off strange smells and that they've heard screams.

I sat across from him. A carved table between us, with two dragons biting their own tails. I thought of Nikos. I always think of him when i need to lie. It's the only way to make the lies sound true.

Screams of joy, i said, and laughed. My Prince, i am searching. That's what we Tremere do. We search, we stumble and sometimes it hurts.

What are you searching for?

That's where i played my part. I let my eyes go hazy and tilted my head like a man remembering something sweet.

The Philosopher's Stone, i whispered. Not only for me my Prince, but for all of us. Imagine waking one day and not being hungry. Seeing the dawn and not burning. Remembering what it was like to be truly mortal.

The Prince looked at me with eyes that had seen the fall of Constantinople and his fingers stopped tapping the table.

Dangerous, he said.

Exactly, i replied. That's why i want us to lie to the others. Not to harm them. So they won't be frightened. People even our own kind fear what they don't understand. And when they're afraid, the beast takes control.

He asked if i was certain. I told him yes. That i had found an old papyrus in a cave on mount Kissavos, that had written on it the secret formula. I told him that i only needed six more months, and then i would bring results.

There was no papyrus. There is no secret formula. What i have is a twin mortal brother who is aging, and a heart that stopped beating thirty years ago but still hurts.

Lies have layers, like the onions my mother used to peel in Karditsa city when i was a child.

The first layer is telling the Prince that i want to cure the vampiric curse. I don't believe that monsters like us deserve the sun. The second is telling my assistants we are searching for power. Power is a dog that turns around and bites.

The third lie is telling myself that i can save Nikos. This is the worst lie, because i know that the Philosopher's Stone can't turn back time. No alchemy makes a seventy year old man forty again.

But every week i go to his house. In the outskirts of the city, a small house with garden full of jasmine. Every week i knock on the door and he opens it slower, more hunched, more grey. He says, come in, Dimitri, the chessboard is waiting, and i sit across from him, watching his hands tremble over the pawns, and i smell on him that smell that old people have near the end.

Last year, i brought him a blanket. Thick, woollen, from Ioannina city. He wrapped it around himself and said, you never get cold, do you? I said, no but i couldn't tell him that i don't get cold because i don't live. I couldn't tell him that cold for me is just a memory, like the smell of bread or the sound of rain on tin roofing.

I always win at chess, he always gets angry and then he always says, you have a devil inside you. I laugh because he doesn't know that the devil isn't inside me the devil is what i became when i left him to grow old alone.

In the chantry basement, under the old open market, i have three cells. I built them myself, with my own hands, stone by stone and in them i keep homeless people brought from the village Halkiada.

The experiments are simple to describe, horrible to perform. I take blood, weigh it, enchant it and in the end put it back inside and watch what happens. Most of the times, what happens is death. But once, three months ago, one of them an old man with broken teeth named Tasos looked at his hand and saw a wound closing. A wound he had for years closed before our eyes. I felt joy for one second, like a human being. Then Tasos began to bleed from his eyes and then he stopped breathing.

I don't know if the Philosopher's Stone exists. I don't know if what i'm searching for is even possible. But every time i think of stopping, i see Niko's face wiping his mouth with a handkerchief and checking it for blood. Then i go back down to the basement and the lie continues.

The Prince agreed. We'll tell the others that i am researching ancient texts. Nothing about experiments, blood and the most important nothing about the Stone.

I thanked him and then left.

Outside, the moon had sunk behind the mountains. I drove to Nikos's house invisible, silent, a shadow that remembers it was once human. I stood beneath his window and from there i could hear him breathing heavily.

I'll go back tomorrow. We'll play chess. He'll look at me and say, Dimitri, are you alright? You look tired. Me, who never gets tired, who never sleeps, who never lives.

And I'll tell him that i'm fine, brother.

That's the fourth lie. The smallest but the heaviest.