I nuzzled my face down next to her neck, plump and moist in that crease, and it was so perfect I couldn’t bear to destroy it, as famished as I was. The thought of biting, tearing, ripping, seemed inconsistent with my feelings, with my purpose, and as I tasted her, taking little licks, tasting her salty excitement, I thought maybe I could, carefully, suck up a large fold of skin and take one bite, piercing through, catching the artery just at the right point.

I mouthed her neck, listening to little moans of pleasure from deep in her throat as she experienced the clowns and rides and delights of the ultimate childhood dream, and when I felt the pulse the strongest, I pulled a great amount of flesh up, then bit swiftly and carefully through with front teeth, and the blood began to gush.

Oh, sweet melody. I hugged that child to my chest, she was so small I could hold all of her—I needed not to sit on her chest or wrestle with her, she came to me willingly and filled with trust. I put both arms around her in a passionate embrace as her living fluid drained into my warmth-starved body, and I knew her joys, her games, her childhood worries and cares. She was wonderful.

When she was empty, I continued to hold her, I rocked her as her essence flowed through me, and I knew I had the answer to my life: innocence.

Innocence. The feeling wrapped around my throat like a scratchy woolen muffler. Innocence. I had never had this. I had never experienced the blind trust that this child had evidenced in climbing out the window to me. I had taken her trust and sucked her dry, and only because she was innocent.

Innocence was her crime. Innocence was her crime and my salvation. Could I better live with the innocence of my victims than with the warped and shattered dreams of the adults they would eventually become?

Yes.

I lifted the child, now a shell, a pathetic, limp rag doll, and tossed her to the side, seeing as I did, two precise slits in the side of her neck—my neatest work to date—and then her face was buried in the snow where she landed and I could see it no more.

I wrapped the dark green blanket around my shoulders, hoping to hold in some of the warmth the small meal afforded, noticing that, with minor alterations, it would serve as a new cape. I brushed the snow from my back, found my cane, and was once again on my way.

“I think Wilton kept it to themselves pretty well. They didn’t want to start any kind of a panic or anything, but if they’d only have been a little less private, if I’d known, I could have maybe prevented . . . well, I don’t know. A lot of kids died, though. Angelina was ruthless.