The Center

With a clamp-jawed swipe, Jud Wechsler sliced the blade of his old scout knife lightly through the tip of his left index finger in a practiced delivery. The sudden slit crossed several scarred furrows, all the same approximate size, all made in the same fashion.

As the cut in the flesh began to fill with red liquid, he raised his hand slowly over his head. Night currents of breeze, pushing gently at his pony tail, now caught and carried the tantalizing molecules of the red flow which diffused from the dripping wound in his finger.

With a practiced smile, his thin bottom lip stretching below his protruding overbite, he stepped toward a steel light standard now coated with settling dew in the early September night. He ran the finger wound vertically down along the wetness on the upwind side. The dew would keep the blood wet longer, allowing it to fill the sweet night air with its enticing fragrance which only his target should sense, or perhaps a prowling dog. Quickly, he withdrew the tube of styptic paste from his flannel shirt pocket, squirted a generous amount into the cut, and then wrapped the finger with a pre-cut piece of first aid tape.

The stinging sensation no longer bothered him anymore. In fact, it had long since served to stimulate his adrenaline or so he surmised. That familiar pain prepped him, mentally at least, to be on guard because it shouldn't be long before the fresh blood drew the target, attracting it like a moth to the killing flame.

It always did.

The targets could smell fresh blood in the air better than sharks in the water.

In his thirty-two years of life, he'd spent the past nine dealing death to their kind--the bloodsuckers--slamming carefully hand-crafted ash stakes deep into their chest cavities, stealing their evil immortality from them and ridding the planet of their kind, each time repaying their kind for the deaths of his parents. Each time he raised the two-pound hammer, he spoke his father's name and then his mother's. "Jacob Wechsler," he would whisper, his right hand squeezing the hammer's handle as he raided it, "... Milena Wechsler," he would finish, driving the first blow to the stake. Sometimes he only needed one blow to deliver the killing wood into the heart. Practice made his technique almost perfect.

Always, in that brief moment, the vision returned, the vision he could never forget, and never forgive--the pair of vampires descending upon his parents as he walked between them, a child holding their hands, through the empty park on the way home from a summer softball game.

The creatures, a male and female pair, descended suddenly from the cloud-locked night sky, their tearing fangs shredding throat flesh even it seemed before their feet ever touched the ground, and he, only six years old and feeling the sudden stiffness in the hands of the parents in his small hands, ran from their screams, turning to look back only from the protection of a tombstone in the cemetery across the nearby creek.

When the male finished feeding on Jud's father, the thing peered into the shadows of the cemetery where Jud hid with his pants soaked at the crotch and his shoes and socks soaked from running through the creek. It saw him quite clearly through the darkness as easily as Jud could see in broad daylight.

The thing's feet didn't seem to touch the ground coming toward him. Its footsteps made no noise. The only audible sound was the bubbling sound of the creek flowing over rocks, but there at the edge of the bordering creek the creature stopped, glowering in fierce anger at him, raising a pale fist at the running water. Only later in time did Wechsler learn vampires could not cross running water.

Wechsler didn't know then what vampires were--that they existed, but after that, later during all those empty years in the orphanage, he learned and sought every book on the subject from the library and every other source.

At eighteen, when he joined the Army, he lucked into experiencing overseas duty in Germany. On leaves and weekend passes, using his training in intelligence, he managed to spend a great deal of time in Eastern Europe, particularly in Rumania and surrounds where he delved firsthand into the actual truth behind the legend to gain as much practical knowledge as possible--knowledge he knew he would need to fulfill his soon-to-be lifelong ambition. As well, the training in ranger school added the necessary ability to track target enemies.

Where vampires were concerned, he became a one-man SWAT team. He didn't need the protection or the advantage of daylight to terminate the creatures in their daytime dormancy. Some he dispatched that way out of convenience, but as well, inspired by his hatred for them, he found he enjoyed the thrill of staying on the edge by tracking them and confronting them at night.

Killing a sleeping vampire gave him no special satisfaction. The first three, he dispatched to the nether world in that fashion, but their demises only kindled the flame of his hatred for their kind. When he stalked and located the fourth, he found he couldn't wait until daylight. He needed to confront the foul creature with his own power against that of the creature. Seeing the horror on its face, when it met its executioner at the peak of its power, gave Wechsler the satisfaction he needed.

His father and mother begged the things that night--his mother pleading that she had a child and his father begging them to take him and spare his wife, but the creatures laughed to themselves and with each other, obviously enjoying the moment of their power and dominance.

Maybe someday he would stop--maybe if finally he met the two foul bloodsuckers who deprived him of his parents and forced him into a life of loneliness. Only if and when he found them, and rammed the two special stakes he'd made especially for them, only then perhaps would he know if he could stop anymore.

But for now, killing vampires was the only thing in his life.

In nine years he'd hunted down sixty-three vampires and staked sixty-two of them into the hereafter. It was the thirteenth creature some eight years before, after all, which eluded him, escaped his trap, but he attributed his failure to his overconfidence rather than to the superstition of the number or the power of the creature.

The thirteenth was a woman, not at all unattractive. Actually, she propositioned him once she realized who he was. Among her kind his name was already a growing legend of its own. She called him by name the moment he confronted her. Cornered in her dank basement apartment off Harlem Avenue in Oak Park, she stood ripe and strong with the fill of a fresh kill on the floor next to where she stood. Her auburn hair, falling from a bun, spilled over her lovely, bare white shoulders as she tore off her blouse. Then, she let her skirt fall to the concrete floor and walked slowly toward him.

Her searching, inviting tongue tantalized the moment as she ran the pointed tip around her flushed, full lips and let her mouth fall open slightly, just enough to reveal the irregularly long ends of her upper canine teeth--as white and seductive as any other part of her naked, lust inviting body.

In that moment, but never again since then, he felt the slightest hesitation. Too late, he knew that's what she counted on. The cross, which he held straight at her, fell to the floor, bouncing under a moldy sofa. Unprotected, except for the stake under his arm, and the otherwise useless hammer in his hand, he watched her seductive smile transform into a fanged weapon ready to strike.

When she leaped at him, in that split of a second he regained his senses. Whipping the stake in a single fluid move, he had insufficient time to brace it. Still, it pierced her chest just under her left breast.

The stabbing impact halted her attack long enough for him to shove her against a wall and raise the hammer, but the ash stake failed to reach her heart. While she obviously felt pain, based on the ear shattering scream which nearly deafened him, she managed to pluck the offending wood from her chest and plunge it into his right shoulder just behind the collar bone.

Now remembering, unconsciously Wechsler rubbed at the scar tissue in his shoulder under his shirt, recalling how she stared down at the gaping hole under her breast. He remembered the congealing blood--someone else's--spilling from the hole.

The memory coming vividly now, he leaned against the dew dampened pole, recollecting the way she hissed at him like a ruptured air compressor. That was when he remembered the water pistol in his pocket, the one he always carried with a half pint of holy water. When she reached for him, the agony in his shoulder prevented him from using his right hand. So, he crossed his left hand over like Wild Bill Hickok and drew, spraying the religious, burning liquid into the gaping, red hole in her chest, and she slammed him against the wall.

Two hours later, after sunrise, he regained consciousness in the apartment. The ask stake, still embedded in his shoulder, had formed a moist scab which pulled away painfully as he removed the wood, but nowhere in the apartment did he find any trace of the woman thing--only the dried blood on the floor where she had stood next to the lifeless body of her victim.

Now tonight, looking around the deserted streets of Macklin, Illinois, he swore he could smell the Mississippi River although it was at least five blocks away, but it was behind him-- at his back, past the four or five blocks of abandoned warehouses and factories and rusted, railroad sidetracks. The westerly night breeze carried the smell of water, particularly muddy water which mingled within itself the aroma of dead fish, but he knew any vampire could still easily distinguish the trace of blood in that foul air current.

From the bar across the street, a young couple pushed open the creaking screen door. It slammed an echo into the night which bounced off of a nearby building. Wechsler watched carefully. It wasn't beyond vampires to pair up for protection as well as for attacking, but the couple walked straight across the street toward one of the many parked cars. Not once did they stop or hesitate. Had they been vampires able to distinguish the trace amount of blood wafting on the night breeze, they would have at least stopped and turned toward the blood aroma unable to help themselves against the addiction of their evil lust.

In the next half hour, four more patrons left the bar. As the last one staggered outside to a car, the bar's lights extinguished, and Wechsler heard the closing of the solid, oak door after which came the clicking sound of sliding bolts locking the premises.

A lone man, emerging from the shadows at the rear of the tavern, lumbered across the gravel lot next door to the bar, his shoes crunching the loose rock in loud interruption of the night's stillness. Then, suddenly he stopped.

Up from the Mississippi River came the heavy roar of diesel engine noise from a towboat with barges in tow surging upriver toward the confluence with the Illinois River. It was a familiar sound in this part of the country as with any river town, not a head-turner. The man, short and heavyset, changed direction now and started to cross the street finally stopping midway to look in Wechsler's direction.

Wechsler patted the hammer, the handle stuffed in his belt like a holstered gun. The six stakes, stuffed at the back of his belt under the loose fitting shirt, pressed against the small of his back as he straightened slightly in practiced alarm readying himself for a confrontation. He reached his right hand into his pants pocket, his palm caressing the five-inch long, polished solid silver cross which would catch even the slightest amount of light in the night.

Continuing but at last halting about five feet away, the short man stopped. He looked Wechsler's six-foot, two-hundred pound athletic countenance up and down, and then nodded.

"Good evening," the man said, his smooth monotone suggesting no threat nor welcome.

"Evening," Wechsler returned.

Hesitantly, the man raised his left hand in a deliberately slow gesture and scratched the back of his neck, glancing down at the pavement. Then, he looked up, letting his hand fall slowly. "We've been expecting you."

Wechsler blinked. Ice cold radiated down his spine and tingled into his legs.

The man turned halfway, perched toward his car. Glancing over his shoulder, he said, "Wipe the blood off that pole before you get us both killed."

Both hands suddenly whipping fresh ash stakes from behind his back. Wechsler reeled around and raised the stakes like daggers, but there was no one behind him. Again, he reeled around, this time facing the man, but the man was walking away, toward his car.

"You can follow me in your own car," the man said, "or I'll give you a ride."

Wechsler's hands dropped to his sides. Was this a trick or what? He looked behind him again, then all around.

The man stood finally at his car holding open the door in a pause. "Well?"

"I'll follow," Wechsler told him. Did the man think he was stupid enough to be liveried into a trap? And what did the man mean by the "we" reference? There was only supposed to be one vampire in this one-horse town, maybe two if the thing had corrupted a townie for convenience, but in such a small town, ordinarily only a singular bloodsucker worked the locals and worked alone for practical reasons.

(Later)

"I must warn you," the heavyset man said, turning his back to the cross in Wechsler's extended hand. They stood in the asphalt parking lot of a converted granary, now sporting multiple casement windows with dim, incandescent light glowing from almost all of them. "You will be received in fear, but as I said, we were expecting you. We just didn't know when."

"I don't get it," Wechsler said.

"You will," the man answered over his shoulder, raising a shielding forearm to the cross. "By the way, my name is Henry, and you can put that thing away. None of us need to be reminded." The man turned his back again. "Please?" he said, softly.

Slowly, Wechsler slipped the cross into his pocket.

Before Wechsler could say anything, the man said, "Thank you."

"What is this place," Wechsler asked, keeping at least ten paces behind the man, all the while looking around in every direction, listening for the beating of night wings above or the padded footsteps which often preceded an attack by the transformed who often resorted to animal shapes for disguise, but the starlit sky and the surrounding flood-lighted woods gave no hint of nether-worldly creatures lurking in the darkness.

Still, Wechsler felt no inclination to relax his guard. Up to now, with so many kills, he thought he'd seen every trick, every ruse, and every possible ploy to throw off his mission or disarm him. So there was no reason to suspect this gimmick was any different.

While it may be a new wrinkle in their kind's self-protection, he smiled at the thought that it might also become his greatest coup, the blockbuster for a last chapter he would put in the book of his memoirs someday. He could almost picture himself on a circuit of television talk shows relating the events of this night, the night when he broke his own record of three kills.

Henry opened the massive steel door, entered a brightly lighted receiving room, and stood in the center of it. Glancing outside at Wechsler, he beckoned him to enter.

Feeling a mild surge of courage, Wechsler grabbed the cross tightly in his pocket, ready for use if needed. He was respectful of the power of vampires, yes, but his own track record gave him sufficient empowerment to walk into the face of death with an inviting, daring smile.

Anyway, he no longer feared death. There were far worse things that could happen to a man, like becoming one of the undead for example, having your soul hovering for possibly centuries halfway to nowhere while your dead carcass roamed the earth being a damned bloodsucker. He fully expected one day that one of them would best him. It was inevitable. He would be getting older and slower than he would realize, and then, that would be it--just like a gunfighter in the Old West.

"Please, Mr. Wechsler." Henry beckoned again from the room inside the door. "You have my word no one will harm you."

"Well," Wechsler said, stepping to the doorway, "you don't have mine."

"I didn't ask," Henry said, simply.

Looking to both sides and around, Wechsler found the room, about forty feet by sixty feet with massive oak beams in the ceiling, to be empty of anyone except himself and Henry. From somewhere, other rooms perhaps, he could hear voices, many of them, other men and women, too, and... children?

Henry cleared his throat. "There are at the moment one-hundred and sixteen of us here at The Center."

Wechsler cocked his head with a threat in his eye. "You can't read minds."

"No," Henry said, "but I can read faces."

"What is this place?" Wechsler demanded. His sweaty fist slipped down the silver shaft of the cross in his pocket.

"It's our regional Center, Mr. Wechsler. You need to see it. It's not the only one of its kind by any means, but it's the only one in this part of the country. The others are in Alaska, upper Canada, and western New Jersey. They're surrounded...," he began, pausing for a moment, "... or shall I say 'protected' by water on one side. Running water."

"Protected from what?"

"From those of us of my kind who practice malice, Mr. Wechsler. We're not all alike, you know." His voice sounded at once sad, bordering for a second on despondent. "In our circumstances we do have some benefit in the safety of our numbers."

Wechsler shook his head in disbelief. "If I didn't know any better, I'd say this looks like an orphanage."

"Yes," Henry acknowledged. "In a way, and who would know better than you."

Instantly, old defenses born of old, repeated wounds caused Wechsler's temples to pound with an accelerated pulse. "What would you know?"

Henry pointed solemnly. "That old pocket knife you carry. It's a genuine scout knife with all the gadgets. The one you always use to draw your own fresh blood to attract our kind."

"What about it?!"

"You received it in the mail the day before your first scout camp excursion. My gift to a lonely young boy trying to make a way for himself in a hostile world."

The man's words touched him suddenly and tears welled in his eyes. Few gifts ever came his way at the orphanage, and only one ever came specifically for him. Usually, the orphanage simply doled out donated new and used items as appropriately as they could, but the special knife came in the mail addressed to him.

The day he received the pocket knife, with its multitude of tools--can opener, leather punch, saw, and others--he cherished it because it was the most timely gift he ever received and the most special personally as well. Ever since all of his life, he cherished it, but he never knew who sent it. Slowly, Wechsler let his left palm flatten against the hard outline of the knife in his pocket. "You?" he said, his voice faltering.

"I'm sorry I couldn't do more," Henry said. "But there are so many needing help. Always."

"But why?" Wechsler felt like somebody had rammed him in the stomach with a bulldozer.

"Call it a collective consciousness," Henry said, turning to examine a blinking light bulb. "But it has to do with responsibility. Our kind made you an orphan. We looked after you as best we could with limited means, and from a safe distance. You were in capable hands, and we have many here who are in more dire circumstances."

"No," Wechsler said, blinking against the tears. "Whatever your trick is, friend, I'm not buying it. You'll have to--"

"Show you," Henry interrupted. "That's one reason I invited you here."

In the next half hour, Henry guided Wechsler through a tour.

At the first room, a mezzanine banquet room filled with tables, toys, and playground equipment, mostly women, old and young, tended to children of all ages, from infants, to toddlers, to preteens.

The children hardly paid any attention to Wechsler, but the adults all stole stares, some with fear, some with frightened contempt, and others with curiosity. What Wechsler noticed, however, were the children. Giggling and playing, some crying and being hugged by attending adults, all of the children displayed irregularly long upper canine teeth and complexions as pale as Henry's and the other adults.

On the far side of the room, Wechsler pushed his back to the wall and turned to Henry. "These kids aren't all--" he began but paused, unable to bring himself to say the next word, 'vampires.' The very thought distressed him.

Henry nodded affirming, again with that solemn look of near despondency. "They are, yes," Henry affirmed. "And none of them will ever grow up. They will remain forever as they are, mentally and physically, until the end of time or until..." He looked at Wechsler with an obvious, silent question. Noticing Wechsler's observation, he added, "We could not expect such special children to find protection in society's conventional institutions as you did."

Wechsler shook his head slowly. "I can't believe it."

"Whether you do or don't, you can't deny what you see. Any one of these children could have been you except for the simple luck that you crossed running water that night your parents died." Henry shifted on his feet. "It's no secret that the untainted blood of children is an even greater treat than that of a mature virgin. You might have been kidnapped and victimized as they were." Henry looked now at a seven year old girl busily dressing a doll. "Would it be right to drive a stake through that child's heart, Mr. Wechsler? Do you think she deserves that? After all, she will never be more than a child. Adulthood has been denied her forever."

"Look," Wechsler said, turning a glare on Henry. "If you want to go on a guilt trip, go by yourself. If you want religious opinions, just go to any church. There's an expert in every one of them."

"Would that I could," Henry said, wistfully. "Would that I could," he repeated.

"What about these other people?"

Henry scratched the back of his neck again. "Victims. Like the children. It's one thing, Mr. Wechsler, to choose this life, and I use the term loosely, but it's another to have it forced upon you. At least here, they have some protection and understanding. A support group if you will. Choice or no choice, the urges are omnipresent and always a danger."

"You don't all go out and..." Wechsler gestured, not wanting to finish the sentence lest he offend Henry.

"No need," Henry said. "I have an arrangement with an associate who operates a medical waste treatment facility. Among other things, he disposes of old blood that the blood banks can no longer hold for use. It still serves a purpose for us." He paused in reflection. "Besides, it's the fresh stuff that triggers the basic addiction. By avoiding it, we also reduce the temptation."

Nodding, Wechsler began to relax and surveyed the room. "This is kind of a halfway house."

"No, Mr. Wechsler. For us, there is no half way."

Realizing his guard was slipping, Wechsler distanced himself a few feet from Henry. "Why are you showing me all this--trying to make me ashamed?"

"Not intentionally," Henry said. "Is that what you're feeling?"

"Your kind killed my parents, and I've been stalking your kind ever since I was old enough."

"We know." The sigh which followed Henry's words came like a cascading river of torment and anguish. "And we know you could kill us all in our dormant sleep."

Wechsler stiffened, feeling the battery of stakes tucked behind him, a reassurance against the feelings of doubt which now troubled him like crumbs of stale conscience falling into his thoughts. "Then why--"

"Please," Henry interrupted. "Let me introduce you to one of my staff."

"Staff?"

Warily, Wechsler followed Henry into a pitch-black hallway and then stopped at the edge of the faint light.

"Oh," Henry said, turning. "I'm sorry. I forget sometimes how it was to have no night vision." With that, he backed up two steps and flipped a light switch.

A long, narrow corridor stretched ahead for over fifty feet at the end of which a solitary door stood ajar. Henry called softly down the hallway. "Susan. Use the light, please."

A click echoed behind the sudden flash of glow in the room. The far end of a desk extended to view. Henry entered the room first with Wechsler behind, clutching the cross tightly in his pocket, but his fist hardened suddenly around the cross like granite at seeing the woman. The metal pressed hard into his perspiring palm.

"This," Henry said, extending a sweeping hand, "is Susan Meade. I believe you've met."

Wechsler's teeth clenched in silent anger, and he rubbed unconsciously at the scar tissue in his shoulder. She was the thirteenth vampire, the one vampire who eluded him in that basement apartment in Oak Park eight years before.

The woman extended a cold, pale hand, delicate and gracefully shaped to Wechsler. "I owe you an apology and a thank you, Mr. Wechsler."

Wechsler did not reach to accept the offered hand. He turned to Henry. "What is this?"

Henry let Susan speak for herself.

Slowly, Susan retracted her hand. "Like you, I still carry the scar of our meeting. For what it's worth, I almost perished that night. If it wasn't for Henry walking in after I slammed you against the wall and you blacked out --"

"I'd have made you a good bloodsucker," Wechsler snapped interrupting.

Susan pressed her hard, red lips together in obvious distress and continued calmly. "If it wasn't for Henry," she repeated, "I might have by now died a meaningless death. I will surely die someday somehow, but my life won't have been a waste because of what you did to me a long time ago and what Henry did for me in that moment to see the way."

"Susan," Henry said, jumping in, "is a psychologist. She helps most with the children and also helps me recruit and network, you might say."

Wechsler shook his head with conviction. "She tried to kill me."

"And you, her," Henry added for him. "But out of her encounter with you, she learned she had a choice to either make the best of her affliction or the worst. She chose the former."

"Does he know," Susan asked Henry.

Henry paused, looking at Wechsler with trepidation. "No," he said, finally, glancing at Susan.

"What?" Wechsler insisted.

Susan moved on agile feet from around the desk and rested her bottom against it. Leveling her deep, black eyes at Wechsler, she began to explain. "In recent years, more and more children are being abducted. The malicious among our kind are using that phenomenon as cover, kidnapping children for their own use and abuse.

"Volunteers from the other Centers have been at work quietly, operating around the country--locating victims, aiding them and relocating them to available temporary Centers and also working at odds against the malevolent of our kind as only we can in ways no law enforcement agencies could conduct themselves, but unfortunately," Susan said, further, "in your zeal and with your skill, you have unknowingly slain three of our volunteers in recent months."

Pulling his sweaty palm from his pocket, Wechsler wiped his hand on his shirt. "How was I supposed to know anything like this --"

"Please," Henry said. "This is not a condemnation. Rather, we have a request."

"Yes," Susan affirmed. "We know you abhor our kind, and rightfully so. You were victimized as a child, but understand that all of us here and many, many others were victims, too. That's something you share with each of us, Mr. Wechsler. You saw those little children in the recreation room. Did they deserve that anymore than you deserved being orphaned?"

Slumping into a hard backed chair, Wechsler straightened up, his hand sliding over the outline of the knife in his pocket--the scout knife, his most prized possession from his childhood--a gift from a sympathetic vampire of all things. Looking back and forth at both of them, he asked, "What is it you want from me?"

"Understanding," Susan said, "and for you to put your own mind at peace with yourself and with us. Let us hereafter attend to our problems and handle them in our own way. There is so very, very much for us to do and so few of us."

"Please," Henry added, solemnly. "If not for us, then for the children who will never grow up and never know a real life. We will keep them, love them, and protect them. They will never harm others as they have been harmed."

Wechsler's face first paled in insight and then flushed with realization. The hard back of the chair pressed the six stakes at the back of his belt into his skin. "You mean it, don't you. You knew I was coming somehow, and you could have overwhelmed me with sheer numbers, but you didn't."

Henry looked down at the floor. "A wasted life is a wasted life in any form, Mr. Wechsler. Despite our predicament, we wish to make the most of ours in some positive way."

Wechsler nodded in agreement with a sigh as he rubbed at the shape of the pocketknife through his pants pocket. In that moment, an odd notion of kinship formed in his thoughts. They were right, and he really had more in common with them than any other people on the earth. "I'm sorry," he said, swallowing hard. "I can't bring those people back. I--I didn't know."

Graciously, Susan crossed the small room. Her cool palm cupped his shoulder in a comforting squeeze, a silent reassurance.

Sitting in the chair, Wechsler reflected upon the emptiness of his life and faced squarely the prospect of greater emptiness if he continued his future the way he conducted his past knowing now what he knew. He'd dedicated his life to the eradication of their kind. That was all he lived for, but knowing now what he knew, how could he refuse them? But not give it up? Finally, he swallowed against the lump in his voice. The insightful answer occurred to him in the wisp of a moment, and for the first time, he relaxed completely. "Would you grant me one request in exchange if I agree?"

Five minutes past sunset, four nights later, Susan stood on tiptoes to kiss the corner of Wechsler's mouth outside The Center, her hand gently squeezing his arm. He reveled at the coolness of her touch and felt intense ecstasy for a brief moment in the gentle, inviting warmth of her gesture provided by lips so cool they were almost cold.

Saying nothing more, having said his words inside The Center, he swung behind the steering wheel of his car. The dozen freshly cut ash stakes lay neatly on the passenger seat next to his hammer. He gave Susan the wisp of a smile as he drove off. Within a month, he would be back to see his new family at The Center.

Unconsciously, he rubbed at the fresh scar tissue forming over the three pairs of delicate puncture wounds in his neck delivered over the previous three successive nights by Susan. With the newly experienced night vision, he didn't really need to turn on the headlights to see now, but he turned them on to avoid being pulled over by police for failing to drive with headlights on. No need to invite unnecessary confrontation with law enforcement.

Now he enjoyed the best of all possible worlds for himself. At last, he belonged to a genuine family. Just as important and at the same time to assure the future of that new family's safety and security, he could continue the dedicated hunt to eradicate the malevolent ,but now with the added advantage of being one of their kind.

THE END

Bio: Mr. Witherow's past credits includes stories to magazines such as Midnight Zoo and to an anthology The Best of the Midwest's Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror Vol. II.

E-mail: Rick Witherow

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