Another one I found while sorting, I remember being astounded by this book when I first read it. Written in 1983 (though this 2001 copy is marketed as revised, in what way it is, I'm not sure), this book is a vampire story set before Dracula, Anne Rice, and Buffy, and reads brilliantly as such, as if it was written in the early 1800's, not showing much of a hint of its latter progeny. John LePerrowne is cursed from the day he is born, the family he is born into, to unknowingly become a vampire-before vampire's exactly know what they are. Falling in at first with vampires that call themselves revenants, deeming themselves higher than humanity, LePerrowne is the anguished humanity realizing the inhuman creature he has become. Striving to not only resist his new being but to find out what his species place is in the world, the story is ultimately one vampire searching the world to answer the question of what is a vampire's origin, its meaning for being in the world? Replace vampire with human, and you get what every writer has sought since letters first were put to a surface. A huge influence in my own idea for a vampire novel. Read this, and then read Octavia Butler's Fledgling.