The Taste of You

The animal fog cleared from Keats's mind some time later.

Leonard's eyes still stared out at the forever road. The truck idled, two wheels in the road, two on the shoulder. Thick, spattered blood covered Leonard, Keats, the windshield, the side window, and the picture that hung from the rearview mirror.

That's when Keats learned that it was impossible for a vampire to cry.

Keats would never go near another old man. We could be so thirsty we were about to bite each other, and Keats would insist on letting the old men walk on, would wait for anything else, even a pre-teen girl. I'm pretty sure that Keats thought pre-teen girls had earned that fate. But every time an old man passed, Keats watched him walk by.

Once, a mugger attacked an old man just a few feet past the alley where we waited. Keats was usually a humane killer, snapped the neck, so that if his food knew what was happening at all, it was only for an instant. Keats gave the old man all the money in the mugger's pockets, then he drained that mugger slowly.

I went to find another meal, and when I got back to that alleyway, Keats was still drinking him, still looking straight into the guy's eyes so that both of them knew how afraid the mugger was.

Keats went home happy that night, happy even that he was a vampire.