As my prey rushes to escape me, I lie in wait at his home. His mother lays beside me, dead. What’s left of her blood oozes from her mouth. My prey is predictable. Children always run to their mother when they’re scared. I’ve turned off the lights. The TV provides the ambiance. I am sitting on the couch, alone in front of the set. I’m remembering when I believed in God. It was a blissful time before I learned two horrible things:
1. I’m a vampire.
2. I have lupism.
I close my eyes and remember the night I was attacked. I was rushed to the hospital. The doctors stabilized me, and while I lay in bed, the Doctor came to visit. He told me about the Balance and how vampires eat the Sin of the world.
The key rattles in the lock. My prey opens the door. He’s a fourteen year old boy. He rushes past the couch to the bedroom in the back.
“Momma!” he yells.
The sun has set. The apartment is dark. The only light comes from the television set. I see the bedroom light turn on.
“Momma?”
He walks back towards the front room. I can smell the fear beading on his brow. He looks at the couch and sees his mother laying listlessly over the side. He takes a step towards her. Then he sees me.
“M-muh, Mr. Turner?” he stutters.
I stand and approach him. “It’s okay, Leroy. We’re not in school. You can call me ‘Joe’.”
The boy puts up his hands. “Look, I didn’t mean to shoot ya. I was just tryin’ to rob ya and you got a little hero in ya. That’s all.”
I smile and nod. “You just needed the money.”
He keeps his hands up and glances at his mother’s corpse. “Hey, did you kill my momma?” He looks at his mother’s body. “Momma? Momma… Mom.”
I catch his throat and peer into his eyes. The eyes are the windows to the soul. I see Sin there. It’s more than a fourteen year old should have. Still, it’s not enough to aggravate my lupism. I don’t want to be more monstrous than I already am.
The blood in his veins pulsates within my grip. It calls to me. I put my hands on the sides of his head. My fingers manipulate his facial nerves. It hurts him. The boy opens his mouth to scream, but the sound never comes. My fingers can feel the fright inside him building. I open my mouth in anticipation.
Blood vessels pop within the boy. The precious substance pools within him. I inhale and the blood rises up from his mouth and rushes into mine. Swallowing and gulping, I taste his Sin on my tongue. Sin, precious Sin, and blood dance past my lips and into my body until I am sated. When I am full, I release the boy, allowing him to collapse in a bloodless heap.
I leave. I didn’t want to kill the mother, but I had to. The boy had shot me and I needed to heal myself. Healing takes magic and magic takes Sin. Hopefully, she wasn’t a bad person, just another sinner.
I walk briskly through the apartment complex, casting spells of forgetfulness on the casual passerby. The spells aren’t powerful. They don’t have to be. This rundown neighborhood is a residence everyone wants to forget. I walk ten blocks up from the complex and get in my car.
My car takes me home. As the road carries my steel chariot onward, I think of all the lucky vampires that have the power of flight. They don’t need cars. Yet for me, flying is an impossibility. Flying takes magic, lots of it, more than my body can handle. So until someone can cure my affliction, my lupism, flight is restricted to the four-wheeled variety.
Back in my apartment, I relax and wind down. I pick up my old Bible and read some stories in the Old Testament. Old habits die hard, I guess. I read from the first book of Samuel about when David was a fugitive from King Saul. It’s a good story. It’s relatable. I’ve been running from myself for three or four decades now, yet I don’t look a day over thirty.
A rat scurries up to my dinette chair. “Whatcha up to, Joe?” it squeaks. It’s part of my roommate, Clyde.
“I’m just reading,” I answer.
Another rat jumps onto the table in front of me. “Oh no, not the Bible again,” says Clyde. Several rats around my apartment groan simultaneously. To be clear, Clyde is not a rat. He is a nest of rats. A rat drops from the ceiling and lands on my shoulder. “I told you to stop reading that stuff. It’s fiction, I tell ya,” Clyde chides. “You wanna hear another vampire story? Something about the great Cornelius? Ya know Cornelius killed Hitler? Shot ‘em in the face to cover his tracks!”
“No, I don’t.”
“How about Prince Vlad Tepes the second, the most famous of all vampires, who saved Europe from the Turkish horde?”
“No.”
The rats on the table speak in unison. “But these are true stories, my friend, stories of heroic vampire deeds, stories that give us hope and help us remember what it means to be a vampire.”
“What makes you think I need that?”
“You’ve just come back from feeding, haven’t you?” Clyde asks through the rat on my shoulder. “But you’re still not happy.”
“I eat children.”
The rats on the table nod their heads. “I don’t agree with your habits, but I know you’re just doing what you have to. You have lupism. If you drink too much Sin you’ll turn into a—ˮ
“I know what I’ll do!” I yell.
The rat on my shoulder jumps down into my lap. “I know it looks bad. You don’t get to eat the people that are evil or cruel. You don’t get to be the secret hero that defines the vampire race, but I want you to know I believe in you. I think there’s good in all vampires. Why do you think I let you stay here?”
I close my Bible. “Well, I won’t be staying here much longer. The missing children are starting to pile up. Bad parents are still parents. They miss their children and they want to know what happened to them.”
“Not all of them,” Clyde reminds me, “Bad kids usually have some pretty bad parents.”
“It doesn’t matter. I’ve almost stored enough Sin within me to do a transformation spell. Then I’m gone.” I stand up and head to my bedroom.
Some rats scurry in front of me. “You really don’t enjoy the feeding? Drinking the blood?”
“Of course, I enjoy it. That’s what makes it wrong.”
The rats move out of my way. They call out, “Oh, by the way, the Doctor stopped by to see about you. He wanted me to tell you he dropped by.”
“Thanks…,” I grunt, courteously, “for everything.”
Inside my small bedroom is a spartan setting: a nightstand, a chair, and a twin-size bed. I lay in my bed and wait for morning to come. The sun holds no ill for vampires. That’s what the Doctor told me. Just because an animal is nocturnal doesn’t mean that it’s scared of the light.
I close my eyes and think back to life before the lupism drove me to hunt wayward children. I worked for a blood bank. To some, it would seem cliché, but real vampires would never touch donated blood. Blood given freely is an act of altruism, not greed or Sin. Vampires need the blood of the Sinful and the selfish. Donated blood is only good for someone with lupism. Too much Sin will turn me into something unpleasant…for everyone.
“Oh, crap! I forgot,” I shout, leaping up from the bed. I reach underneath the mattress and pull out my orb. The black ball feels warm in my hand. Then it pricks me. A small measure of blood leaves my body. The ball absorbs it. Then it turns gold. I breathe a sigh of relief. Leroy’s mother wasn’t such a bad person after all. I’ll be okay for now.
I lay back in my bed and go back to happier times in my head: my time in Africa, the Peace Corps, feeding the hungry, helping the sick, etc. In a flash, I remember a man. He threatened me and my co-workers with a gun. He was desperate. He wanted our supplies. I told him that was impossible. I told him about the value of sharing. Then, Isabel, my wife, disarmed him and knocked him out. I remember chiding her for being so violent. I thought I was getting through to the gunman. Isabel just smiled at me. Later, she lied to me. She said the gunman was responsible for some missing villagers. I had no idea. She was so good to me then.
The morning brings forth another school day and all the joys that come with it. I laugh with my students and teach them the wonders of science. Every new scientific topic brings more joviality to my life. I just can’t help it. I’m a vampire and I use magic, which means:
Everything I’m teaching is absolute bunk.
But the kids like it, and the principals love how I bring a “positive attitude” with me to work. My students are inner city kids. Many come from broken homes, but they’re harder to deal with than third world children. In Africa, teachers automatically command respect. Here in the States, a student’s respect must be earned.
Benevolence is a comfortable costume for me, but it is still a costume. I’m always looking for a troubled child to act out, to disrupt my class, to show me the stress and strain of a harsh family life. I need Sin, but not a lot. Sin requires choice. High school students may still not know exactly what they’re doing, but they’re old enough to know when it’s wrong. Most of them are innocent enough, like most children. Yet in the eyes of some, I can see lust and hatred, the beginnings of maleficence.
Stupidity is not a vampire trait. I target children from other classes as well as my own. During my planning period, I go to the teachers’ lounge to catch up on gossip and make copies of worksheets.
Mrs. Nanners is there. “Did you hear what happened to Leroy Johnson?”
She’s talking to Mrs. McAdilly. “Leroy? The one they caught in the bathroom with that other boy?”
“No,” says Nanners, “that was last year. This Leroy’s a freshman. He’s in Mr. Turner’s class.” She turns to me. “Hey, Mr. Turner,” she says. I return the greeting before she gives McAdilly the gory details of last night’s feeding.
“That’s the fifth child this year,” says McAdilly. “Did you hear about this, Mr. Turner?”
I’m busy at the copy machine, but I answer, “Oh, yeah. I have to send his family a card.”
“The mother’s dead too,” Nanners grimly adds.
I pause for effect, look down, and utter, “Oh. How sad.” Then I turn to leave. The two begin talking about holding a memorial service for the children that have turned up dead or missing over the year. I return to my room to prepare for my next class.
Waiting for me in my room is a white-haired man with a short, grizzly beard. He’s tromping around with heavy boots, looking at my well-decorated walls. He turns to me, flashing his light-colored eyes. A jawbone necklace hangs over his chest. The jaw is the shape of a human’s, yet has the sharp teeth of a canine’s. It’s a werewolf bone.
I greet him. “Hello, Doctor.”
He turns to me in his heavy brown coat. “Salutations, Joseph, or is it, ‘José’? You move around so much.”
“It’s just ‘Joe’.”
The Doctor looks me over. “Your skin’s bronze. What are you? Black? Indian? Arab?”
“Latino,” I tell him. “Puerto Rican. My father was Black American, but he left when I was young, so I identify as Boriqua. My mother never taught me Spanish.”
“Good backstory!” says the Doctor, clapping his hands slowly. “I remember when you were Dominican, but you could never get the accent right. Have you tried being Asian yet? The spell doesn’t take a lot of magic.”
I shake my head. “No, I’ve been Black. I’ve been White, but I think Latinos have more fun.”
The Doctor’s face turns grim. “So you’ve been having fun? With your diet?”
“No,” I respond. “I just do my best.”
“So you’re keeping yourself together?”
I nod.
“Why don’t you work at the blood bank anymore?”
“I told you. Donor blood is meant to help the sick. I couldn’t dishonor their efforts by stealing the blood for myself.”
“So you drink from children?”
“Only the bad ones,” I tell him, “only the ones who’ve turned to darkness.”
The Doctor gives me a pitiful head shake.
“I have lupism,” I snap. “Whad’ya want me to do?”
The Doctor purses his lips. “The Balance must be preserved, I guess.”
“Yeah, the Balance.”
The Doctor looks at me. “I have a favor to ask of you.”
I turn away from him and walk toward my desk.
He keeps talking. “I need you to look after someone. It’s a girl. She needs protection.”
I continue to get my papers together for the next class, only half-listening.
“She needs protection from Cornelius.”
I stop. “Which Cornelius? Not ‘the’ Cornelius. He’s a hero. He killed Hitler.”
The Doctor touches his jawbone necklace. “Sadly, his heroism has turned to madness. Do you remember the Ebola outbreak a few years ago?”
I nod. “Thousands died.”
“The humans were covering up his work.”
“It wasn’t Ebola?” I ask.
“No. It was a blood bomb.”
A picture of thousands of exsanguinated corpses pops into my mind. “Cornelius did that?”
The Doctor nods in confirmation. “He’s come to see humanity as a threat to the environment. He wants to eliminate them. He’s putting together a spell for a new bomb. This one’ll kill millions, instead of thousands.”
I can only stand in stunned silence.
“He needs one final ingredient,” explains the Doctor, “a being of great good and great evil.”
My mind is buzzing, trying to comprehend his words. A hero turned bad?
The Doctor calls out: “You can come out now.”
A teenage girl steps out from a dark corner of my classroom. The Doctor must’ve been hiding her. The girl has an abdominal protrusion.
“She’s pregnant,” I blurt out.
“Not by choice,” the Doctor clarifies, “she’s tried to abort the child three times already. It’s determined to live. Do you remember what I told you about light magic?”
I recite, “Light magic is the magic of creation. It can only be performed by the pure and innocent.”
“And until her child is born, she and the child share blood. They are one flesh.”
I shake my head. “She’s a child. She can’t have that much Sin.”
“The Balance says otherwise,” the Doctor corrects.
I sigh. “Of course, it does. That’s why we have sick vampires, right? To make sure we don’t eat all the Sin in the world.”
“The Balance must be preserved.”
The bell rings for the next class. The Doctor’s form dissipates as my students come in. His last words are:
“Protect her.”
I put the girl in an empty desk away from the other students. She’s quiet during my lessons. She uses the bathroom between each class. Her demeanor reminds me of Isabel: quiet, but resolute. During my last class, I look at her face and into her eyes, wondering what Sin could…
“God! Damn!”
My kids gasp at my expletive and chastise me. I didn’t know so much Sin could be in such a quiet, young girl. Once school lets out, I throw some lesson plans together and head home.
In the car, the girl opens up:
“I ain’t scared. I ain’t scared of dis baby. I ain’t scared uh no po’po’, and I def’ not scared uh dat monster what tried to eat me.”
I remark, “You were quiet in class.”
“I ain’t stupid,” she responds. “I know how to keep the heat down. Be good in school and you can thug all night.”
“Thug?” I ask.
“Me and my set,” she explains, “we go robbin’, smokin’, oh my god, we smoke. Dat’s why I had to get rid of dis baby. My set wouldn’t let me do nuthin’ fun.”
“What about your mother?” I inquire.
“I don’t listen to her. She a hoe.”
“She…?”
“She a hoe. She an actual, factual hoe.” She looks out the car window. I can see a tear roll down her face. “It ain’t even my fault. That monster want me and my baby. I didn’t even want this baby. I sold all the drugs I needed to pay for an abortion, but the baby wouldn’t die. I had to kill some dude and rob ‘im to get dis dude down on 8th street to take dis baby out. Baby still wouldn’t come out.” She starts to sob. “Ah tried to…to do it myself…with uh…um.” She gestures at her groin. “But one of my set found me out and took the thing away from me.” More tears start to fall. “I’m sixteen years old. I’m grown. I don’t want dis. I just wanna drank and smoke, drank and smoke. Dat’s all.”
I exhale. “So…tell me about this ‘monster’.”
She scratches her crotch casually. “Doctor man told me ‘bout ‘im. I thought it was different people, but he told me it was all one guy,” she says. Then she asks, “Mister, why would God do dis to me?”
It hurts me to tell her, but: “There is no God, only the Balance.”
I look over in time to see hope vanish from her face. Then she puts a hand on my thigh. “Mister? You gone protect me? I got some good pussy if you do. It’s real good. Everybody say so.”
I put my hand on top of hers. “I’ll protect you.”
At a stoplight, I take a long look at her swollen womb. I have to wonder: what kind of child would want to be born into this world so badly? Three abortion attempts? Her child is definitely using light magic. I was right before. This girl is like Isabel. She is quietly resolute…in her own way.
The girl stops talking to contemplate her fate. I think back to my time in Africa. I think about how Isabel sacrificed herself to save me and our co-workers. She saved us all from a militia group, at the cost of her own life. I feel like I’m about to do the same, somehow.
We walk into my apartment building and head up the stairs to the third floor. It’s a good building. It’s better than Leroy Johnson’s neighborhood. The rodent likenesses of Clyde only reside in the one apartment. He finds his victims elsewhere, unless an unwary human decides to move into Clyde’s apartment. That’s when Clyde gets to eat at home, which reminds me:
“Don’t bother the rats.”
The girl yelps, “You got rats?”
“They’re not actually rats,” I explain. “My roommate’s a vampire that likes to stay in the form of rats.”
The girl stops me. “So dey not actual rats. Dey vampire rats?”
“Exactly.”
She tilts her head. “And you ‘spect me to feel safe here?”
“I eat children.”
I let that sink in for a moment, yet before she panics, I state, “You can take your chances with Cornelius.”
The girl decides not to run. I open the door to my apartment. Then she asks, “You sure you not gon’ eat me?”
“Of course not,” I cajole, coaxing her into the apartment. “If I ate you, I’d turn into a werewolf.”
She enters the apartment timorously. “So how big are dese rats?”
I look around before answering, but I don’t see any rats. I close the door and lock it.
The girl looks at me with pleading eyes. “What’s wrong?” she asks.
I look in the kitchen, under the table, and behind the fridge. “I guess my roommate’s not here,” I reply.
The girl lets out a deep breath. “Good, ‘cuz I hate rats.”
I guess it is good Clyde isn’t here to frighten my young charge. Still, where is he? I didn’t think he’d go out feeding tonight. Then again, I was harsh with him last night. He probably didn’t want to wait up for the grumpy cripple. I look at the ground. I really am a monster.
“You gotta TV?” the girl asks.
“No.”
“Got some ‘dro?”
“I don’t smoke,” I answer, “and you’re pregnant.”
“Man, I can’t wait to get dis baby outta me,” she exclaims. “I can’t do nuthin’ fun.”
I offer, “You want some food?”
“I don’t eat,” she responds.
“But your baby?”
“I don’t want dis baby!” she screams. “Nuthin’ else worked. Maybe I’ll starve ‘im out.”
That’s when I notice her clothes are a bit baggy. I thought that was just her style.
“You got some drank?”
“I’m a vampire.”
The girl throws up her hands. “Man, I’m goin’ to sleep ‘den. You gotta bed? No, no, don’t say it. You sleep in a coffin.”
“I sleep in a bed.”
“Oh, Hallelujah!” she cries out. “Take me to bed.”
As a good host, I lay her in my bed. I grab a chair from the kitchen and sit at the foot of the bed, watching over her. For a moment, I wonder if this is what it’s like to have children. Do you watch over them, even when they’re bad? Her breathing changes as she falls into a deep sleep. Kicking off my shoes, I pull out my Bible. I read from the book of Jonah. It tells the story of a prophet running from the Will of God. I ponder if the prophet had a point.
I shuffle my feet, straightening myself up in my chair. As I do so, something brushes against my foot. I look down. It’s a rat’s tail. I bend over to see what my roommate is doing under my bed. I see more rat tails under the bed. So that’s where Clyde’s been hiding. However, in the dim light of dusk, I notice that the tails aren’t moving. Oh no…
“Shh…,” someone whispers beside me. “You’ll wake her.”
Slowly I sit up in my chair and look up. Standing over me is a dark-haired man in a suit. He holds up a hand to calm me. Then he squats down next to me. “I’m not here to fight,” he states. “You and I are both vampires. We’re sensible creatures, yes? We should talk to each other to reach an understanding, hmm?”
As the shadows of night fall outside, I nod my head.
“Good,” says the swarthy man, “I am Cornelius. Perhaps you’ve heard of me?”
I nod again.
“Excellent, excellent. Good. You’ve heard that I’m a hero. I killed Hitler. Why? To make the world a better place. That is why I’m here tonight with you.” Cornelius smiles congenially at me. “As a fellow vampire, both you and I know that you could just raise your hand and suck out this child’s blood. You could kill her right now and I couldn’t stop you.” He puts up a hand. “But I don’t want you to do that.”
I find my voice. “You need her to create a blood bomb.”
Cornelius stands and gesticulates. “Yes! Yes. Now you are talking. This is good.” He walks to my bedroom door. “Come with me.”
I follow him outside of the room. He sits at the kitchen table. I lean against the wall next to my bedroom door.
He pats the kitchen table. “Come. Sit.”
I remain where I am. “You want to wipe out humanity,” I state calmly.
Cornelius makes a puzzled face. “Who told you that? Was it the Doctor?”
I say nothing.
“It was the Doctor,” guesses the vampire. “Let me put your mind at ease, yes? The Doctor lied to you. I do not want to wipe out humanity. Why would I do such a thing? I’m a vampire. I need their blood to live. They give us sustenance.”
“You think the humans are a threat to the environment,” I assert.
Cornelius laughs aloud, but quickly quiets himself. The girl is still asleep. “My word,” he swears, “you are a very funny man, very funny. You do know the humans could never destroy the world. The Balance wouldn’t allow it.”
“The Balance?”
“Yes, the Balance,” he says with a smile. “You know, the Balance must be preserved,” he says in a low, mocking tone. “You can’t have too much destruction. The Balance must be preserved. You can’t have too much love. The Balance must be preserved. You can’t be too wise. You can’t be too stupid. You can’t go too fast. You can’t move too slowly. Everything must be somewhere in between.”
“Too much of anything is bad for you,” I paraphrase.
Cornelius snarls, “Is it now? Is it really?”
“I believe that to be true.”
“Oh,” he says, “you believe it? You have faith in it, yes? Well, what if I told you that the Balance is not just a system of beliefs? What if I told you that it’s actually a person?”
“A person…”
“Yes!” Cornelius pipes, “A living, breathing person, that’s what the Balance is. That is what you believe in.” He lowers his voice to a growl. “It’s a maniacal lunatic that must be stopped.”
I get off the wall. This is ridiculous.
“Wait, wait,” pleads Cornelius, “Hear me out. This Balance is responsible for the creation of vampires, true, but have you ever heard of werewolves?”
“I’m familiar with the concept.”
“Ach, terrible creatures,” says Cornelius with a wave of his hand. “Hairy beasts, yes? All they do is feed and grow stronger, eat and grow stronger. The Doctor hunts them. Dangerous creatures, very dangerous creatures. He probably told you about them.”
“I’ve heard of them.”
“Did he tell you that they all used to be vampires? They’re all vampires afflicted with a disease called lupasy or something like that.”
“Lupism.”
The vampire leans forward in his chair. “So you’ve heard of it.”
I nod.
He goes on, “Lupism is a disease the Balance created to keep vampires in check.”
“You’re making a blood bomb that will kill millions,” I remind him.
“Yes, I am,” he confirms. “I need to consume the blood of millions.”
I realize aloud. “You need the Sin to give you the power to destroy the Balance.”
“Precisely!” he affirms.
“You have gone mad.”
“Madness?” he yips. “I’m not the one who allows evil to exist in the world. I stopped Hitler, yes, but I wasn’t going to stop there. I was going to drink the blood of Josef Stalin too, a man who believed a million corpses was merely a statistic. Then I was going after Chairman Mao. I was going to purify the world of their ilk. I was going to make the world a better place,” he says, standing up from his chair. “But the Balance stopped me. It told me that there couldn’t be too much good in the world. The Balance must be preserved.”
My bedroom door opens up beside me. The pregnant girl steps through. “Ay! What y’all yellin’ ‘bout out here?”
Cornelius waves his hand before I can move. “Sleep,” he commands her. I catch the waif as she falls to the floor.
“What’s wrong with you?” I shout at the vampire.
Cornelius leans towards me. “What’s wrong with me?” he repeats. “What’s wrong with you? Why didn’t you block my spell? You were right next to her.”
Ashamed, I utter, “I just do my best.”
“Oh my word,” says the vampire, with dawning clarity, “you have lupism, don’t you? I knew it was bad, but this… You’re a vampire. You’re supposed to be faster, yes, stronger. My word…”
I sneer at him. “If you’re going to kill me, just do it.”
He stands up. “No. No, you are precisely the vampire that would benefit from the fall of the Balance. Don’t you see? Once I kill the Balance, I’ll have the power to remake the world as I see fit. I can cure your disease. I can cure ALL disease,” he assures me. “All you have to do is give the girl to me. Her blood will pave the way to a world without Sin. All will be pure and clean. All will be accepted for who they are. War will be a thing of the past.”
I scowl, “I just have to let you drink her blood and kill her child, so that you can take the lives of millions.”
He adds, “To greatly improve the lives of billions.”
I cradle the girl’s head in my hand. “I gave my word. I said I’d protect her from you.”
Cornelius kneels down near me. “It’s okay,” he comforts, “if you sin for my sake, I will forgive you.”
As I look into his eyes, I can see that he’s telling the truth. All I have to do is betray this girl, imperfect as she is, and allow millions of people to die. I tighten my grip on the girl’s head. She starts to wake up. I tell the vampire, “I want to do the right thing.”
“If there were some other way, I would be doing it,” he persuades. “The Balance made the rules and now we will unmake them. I could be the perfect god you desire. I could make you into anything you want to be.”
I think of Isabel, sacrificing herself to save us. She attacked the militia men in Africa and drank their blood. The girl is awake now. She’s terrified. I manipulate her facial nerves with the hand I’m holding her head with.
“What are you doing?” asks the panicked vampire. “Stop it! You could kill her!”
I look at the girl, whose eyes are wide with terror and drink her Sin. It is intoxicatingly sweet, but I stop short of killing her. If the baby survived three abortions and a starving mother, it’ll survive this too.
Cornelius roars, “What have you done? I needed her! Wait… What’s happening?”
I’m transforming. It hurts so much, but I feel something else: incredible power. The form of Cornelius shrinks beneath me as I grow taller. The windows rattle as my first deep-throated howl erupts from within me. It feels good. I’m happy knowing this is how Isabel felt in her last moments of life.
I grab Cornelius with my claws and rip him in two. I suck the juice and meat from one end of him and then the other. I turn to the girl. She looks so tasty. I can hear my saliva dripping on the floor. Sadness gives me pause, but she looks so delicious. Now I know why Isabel bit me that night. She truly could not help herself.
I lunge at the pregnant child.
A cold, metal blade penetrates my heart. He’s here, as I knew he would be: the Doctor, just like the night my wife turned me. The blade is silver, like the one he used on her. He’ll probably take the girl to the hospital later and tell her two horrible things:
1. She’s a vampi