Dead to the World

heard those very words before Eric ripped their throats out. But the fact is, vampires don’t have to kill once they’re past their first year. A sip here, a sip there, that’s the norm. When he looked so lost, it was hard to remember he could dismember me with his bare hands.
    I’d told Bill one time that the smart thing for aliens to do (when they invaded Earth) would be to arrive in the guise of lop-eared bunnies.
    “Come get in my car before you freeze,” I said. I was having that I’m-getting-sucked-in feeling again, but I didn’t know what else to do.
    “I do know you?” he said, as though he were hesitant about getting in a car with someone as formidable as a woman ten inches shorter, many pounds lighter, and a few centuries younger.
    “Yes,” I said, not able to restrain an edge of impatience. I wasn’t too happy with myself, because I still half suspected I was being tricked for some unfathomable reason. “Now come on, Eric. I’m freezing, and so are you.” Not that vampires seemed to feel temperature extremes, as a rule; but even Eric’s skin looked goosey. The dead can freeze, of course. They’ll survive it—they survive almost everything—but I understand it’s pretty painful. “Oh my God, Eric, you’re barefoot.” I’d just noticed.
    I took his hand; he let me get close enough for that. He let me lead him back to the car and stow him in the passenger seat. I told him to roll up the window as I went around to my side, and after a long minute of studying the mechanism, he did.
    I reached in the backseat for an old afghan I keep there in the winter (for football games, etc.) and wrapped it around him. He wasn’t shivering, of course, because he was a vampire, but I just couldn’t stand to look at all that bare flesh in this temperature. I turned the heater on full blast (which, in my old car, isn’t saying much).
    Eric’s exposed skin had never made me feel cold before—when I’d seen this much of Eric before, I’d felt anything but . I was giddy enough by now to laugh out loud before I could censor my own thoughts.
    He was startled, and looked at me sideways.
    “You’re the last person I expected to see,” I said. “Were you coming out this way to see Bill? Because he’s gone.”
    “Bill?”
    “The vampire who lives out here? My ex-boyfriend?”
    He shook his head. He was back to being absolutely terrified.
    “You don’t know how you came to be here?”
    He shook his head again.
    I was making a big effort to think hard; but it was just that, an effort. I was worn out. Though I’d had a rush of adrenaline when I’d spotted the figure running down the dark road, that rush was wearing off fast. I reached the turnoff to my house and turned left, winding through the black and silent woods on my nice, level driveway—that, in fact, Eric had had re-graveled for me.
    And that was why Eric was sitting in my car right now, instead of running through the night like a giant white rabbit. He’d had the intelligence to give me what I really wanted. (Of course, he’d also wanted me to go to bed with him for months. But he’d given me the driveway because I needed it.)
    “Here we are,” I said, pulling around to the back of my old house. I switched off the car. I’d remembered to leave the outside lights on when I’d left for work that afternoon, thank goodness, so we weren’t sitting there in total darkness.
    “This is where you live?” He was glancing around the clearing where the old house stood, seemingly nervous about going from the car to the back door.
    “Yes,” I said, exasperated.
    He just gave me a look that showed white all around the blue of his eyes.
    “Oh, come on,” I said, with no grace at all. I got out of the car and went up the steps to the back porch, which I don’t keep locked because, hey, why lock a screened-in back porch? I do lock the inner door, and after a second’s fumbling, I had it open so the light I leave on in the kitchen could spill out. “You can come in,” I said, so he could cross the threshold. He scuttled in after me, the afghan still clutched around him.
    Under the overhead light in the kitchen, Eric looked pretty pitiful. His bare feet were bleeding, which I hadn’t noticed before. “Oh, Eric,” I said sadly, and got a pan out from the cabinet, and started the hot water to running in the sink. He’d heal real quick, like vampires do, but I couldn’t help but wash him clean. The blue jeans were filthy around the hem.