“Charlie, that’s ridiculous. Of course I want—”

“I don’t believe you!”

Reg paused, a hurt look on his face. When he finally spoke, his voice was quiet. “And since when do we not trust each other?”

“Since I can see with my own eyes how much you’re enjoying the humans.”

“Not all the humans,” he argued. “I’m not too fond of some of the teachers.”

“But you’re plenty fond of Poe.”

“As are you,” Reg said. “And of Dexter and Sydney and Sophia.”

He was dodging the question, and we both knew it.

Tears threatened to flow, but I held them back, forcing them to retreat to whatever endless pool they came from. I would not cry again.

“You’ve been with me a century,” I growled at Reg. “You’ve been with him five minutes.”

With those words, the tears trying to escape my eyes miraculously dried up, and I celebrated a brief, silent victory over this one, insidious, human condition. Then I dropped the Elder letter to the floor and raced out into the comfort of night.

Twenty

Darkness, My Old Friend

I hit the road running, gravel grinding under my shoes and spitting out behind me like tiny bullets. I turned right, away from the village, away from Reg and Sal, away from all the crumpled letters of rejection, away from the hilly landscape where the sun rose every morning, counting off one more day in the march toward certain death. I ran as fast as my human legs could move, until blood pounded in my ears and my heart hammered at such a pace, I couldn’t tell one beat from the next.

I slowed to a walk, panting and cursing at the cornfields about betrayal and injustice until eventually my breath came normally, and the only sound in my ears was the crispy rustle of the cornstalks in the night breeze. The fields had turned from lush green to brown and brittle in the six short weeks since we’d arrived in Iowa. Just another living thing doomed on a relentless path that humans called the “circle of life.”

More like a straight line with a dead end.

The narrow lane between towers of corn crops opened eventually into a yawning abyss. The light from a low-hanging, nearly full moon showed an endless stretch of field in either direction, where the crop had already been harvested. My feet wandered off the road and into the field, the darkness wrapping around me like a favorite old blanket. Except unlike a blanket, I felt a chill out here in the open, without the cornstalks to hold back the cool fall air. I felt exposed, vulnerable.

My feet stopped, and my mind caught up a split second later.

Vulnerable like a human. Like vampire prey.