Blood Lines

him.
    Waiting for me ? His nervous laugh went no further than his lips, doing nothing to displace the silence that filled the huge room like fog. Maybe I should just go, come back another night . But he stepped forward; one pace, two. He'd forgotten to turn on the lights and now the switch was behind him. He'd have to turn his back on the coffin to reach it and he couldn't, he just couldn't. The spill of light from the hall would have to be enough even though it barely chased the shadows from around the body.
    The breeze created by his approach stirred the edges of the plastic sheet, setting it fluttering in anticipation.
    'Jesus, this is too weird. I'm out of here."
    But he kept walking toward the coffin. Eyes wide, he watched his ringers grab the plastic and drag it off the artifact.
    Man, I am going to be in deep shit . Maybe if he put the plastic back the way it had been, no one would ever know that he… that he… What the fuck am I doing ?
    He was bending over the coffin, breath slamming faster and faster against the back of his throat. His eyes stung. He couldn't blink. His mouth opened. He couldn't scream.
    And then it started.
    He lost his most recent self first: the night's work, all the other nights of work before it, his wife, their daughter, her birth, red-faced and screaming- " Honestly, Doc, is she supposed to look like that? I mean, she's beautiful but she's kind of squashed… "-the wedding where he'd gotten pissed and almost fallen over while dancing with an elderly aunt. He lost nights drinking with his buddies, cruising up and down Yonge Street-" Lookit the melons on that one !"- The Grateful Dead blaring out of the car speakers, the smell of beer and grass and sweat soaking into the upholstery.
    He lost his high school graduation, a ceremony he'd made by the skin of his teeth- " Think maybe now you can get off your ass and get a job? Now you got your fancy piece of paper with your name on it ?"
    " I think so, Dad ." He lost the humiliation of not making the basketball team- They're not going to call my name. I 'm the only guy who tried out they didn't want. Oh, God, I wish I could sink through the floor .- and he lost the pain when football broke his nose. He tasted again his first kiss and felt again for the first time the explosive results of masturbation, which did not grow hair on his palms or make him blind. And then he lost them.
    In quick succession he lost his mother, his father, too many siblings, the house he'd grown up in, the smell of a winter's worth of dog turds melting on the lawn in the spring, a teddy bear with all the fur chewed off, the sweet taste of a nipple clutched between frantically working lips.
    He lost his first step, his first word, his first breath.

    His life.
    Yes.
    With iron control, Henry drew his mouth back from the soft skin of the young man's wrist and laid the arm down almost gently, pulling the jacket cuff forward until it covered the small wound. Although he preferred to feed from desire-it had natural parameters for the Hunger that anger lacked-it was, on occasion, good to remember his strength.
    He rose slowly to his feet, brushing at the decayed leaves on his coat. The coagulant in his saliva would ensure that the bleeding had stopped and all three would regain consciousness momentarily, before the damp and cold had time to do any damage.
    He glanced down to where they sprawled in the darker shadow of a yew hedge and licked a drop of blood from the corner of his mouth. As well as the bruises, he'd given them a reason to fear the night, a reminder that the dark hid other, more powerful hunters and that they, too, could be prey. He was in no danger of discovery for their memories of the incident would be of essence, not appearance, and intensely personal. Whether or not he'd changed their attitudes or opinions, he neither knew nor cared.
    I am vampire. The night is mine.
    His mood broke under the weight of that pronouncement and he left the quiet oasis of the park, smiling at the news-reel quality of the voice in his head-And thanks to the vampire vigilante, the streets are safe to walk again-the dream and his earlier disquiet washed away by the blood.
    Celluci sighed and stuffed the parking ticket into his jacket pocket. From midnight to seven the street outside Vicki's apartment building was permit parking only. The time on the ticket said five thirty-three; if he'd gotten up five minutes earlier, he could have avoided a twenty dollar fine.
    It had been