Enoch slammed the hood of his stubborn Cutlass. Great. He'd been ignoring an ominous grinding noise for weeks, and now he'd have to walk home.

Within fifteen minutes he was in town, but it was a bright day, and the sweat was pouring off him. Judging by the number of kids on bikes and playing on the sidewalks, Enoch guessed it was about 3:30. He heaved a sigh of relief in spite of himself; though he was years out of high school, 3:30 still felt like freedom.

High-pitched giggles caught his attention, and Enoch turned to watch five little kids chase a red rag behind the Cavazos grocery. There didn't seem enough of a breeze to carry a rag, but Enoch figured they'd found a dust devil behind the store. One by one the children disappeared, but their laughter only grew louder. Enoch smiled and trudged on.

The house was unbearably hot, even hotter than outside. He stumbled in, sunblind, and automatically reached for the ceiling fan switch.

"Gabriel? Silver? Anyone home? The car broke down again."

The AC rumbled in Silver's room.

"Silver?" he called again. He moved to Silver's closed door and heard bedsprings creaking. Enoch paused. He didn't want to barge in if Susan was there.

More creaking. Embarrassed, Enoch started to walk away.

"Help! Help me, Enoch!"

Enoch spun around and rammed the door. It gave way with a lurch. Inside, Silver and Susan struggled on the bed. Susan looked up at Enoch, her eyes huge and wet with terror. Her blouse was ripped.

"Silver, what the hell are you doing?" Enoch tackled his brother. Susan rolled off the bed and ran away crying.

"Mind your own business," Silver said, yanking away. But it was too late--Susan was gone, the screen door slamming behind her.

"My own business? She was screaming for help!"

"We were just messing around," Silver said, pushing black hair from his eyes. He stood panting in his room's doorway, looking after his longtime girlfriend.

"What?!" Still on the floor, Enoch tried to calm down. "What's going on, Silver? I thought you loved Susan. Why would you--"

"I didn't!" Silver glared down at him, chest still heaving.

"But you would have," Enoch retorted. He felt ill. "Silver, what would Mom have thought?"

"Don't you dare talk about Mom," Silver said, and then the screen door slammed behind him, too.

Gabriel walked in while Enoch was calling Susan's house but getting no answer. As always, Enoch's second brother looked cool and wrinkle-free in a white shirt and pants. Like their mother had, Gabriel had a gift for controlling his body temperature. Enoch had never seen him sweat.

"Silver home?" Gabriel asked, walking to the kitchen sink.

"No," Enoch said, hanging up. "I mean, he was, but now he's gone."

"Must be a slow day at the restaurant if they sent him home so early."

Gabriel doused his head under the faucet. Enoch blinked in surprise, but he guessed even Gabriel felt the heat sometimes. He wondered if he should tell Gabriel what he'd seen.

"Something wrong?" Gabriel eyed him warily while mopping his head with a kitchen towel.

"The Cutlass died on me," Enoch finally said.

"Oh." Gabriel looked relieved. "Well, that's easily fixed."

"You didn't hear the noise it was making."

Outside, emergency vehicles had engulfed the Cavazos grocery. A circle of women holding infants and small children stood just outside the swirl of red and white lights. Some held their children behind them so the kids couldn't see what was happening. Enoch felt ill again, remembering the kids who'd been playing with the red rag.

"C'mon," he said to Gabriel. "Let's find out what happened."

"No, Enoch, it's a circus. Let's wait till things settle down. We can ask someone later."

"But there were kids playing back there."

"Enoch, if they need you, they'll come and find you," Gabriel said. "They always do."

Enoch grimaced and tried to see through the tangle of people. Gabriel took his brother's arm.

"You're right," Enoch said eventually. He forced himself to walk away. "But this is a bad one, Gabriel. I can feel it."

"Susan and me? No, we agreed to go our separate ways." Silver smiled into the phone, turning his back on Enoch's glare of disgust. "Great, I'll pick you up tonight."

Enoch pitched himself on the couch and flicked on the TV, ignoring Silver's gesture to mute it. He couldn't stand to listen to his brother another second. With a voice that sexy and a body to match, Silver didn't need to be raping anyone. Hell, Susan had already been sleeping with him; he didn't need to rape her either. No one needed to hurt anyone. Apparently, Silver hadn't been paying attention when their mother had told them that.

On the evening news, the top story for the third day in a row was the murder. The camera panned across the lot behind the Cavazos grocery, showing how it had been filled with memorial wreaths, crosses, balloons, and stuffed animals. Enoch had already been there to pay his respects. He'd concentrated hard, hoping to catch a vibration, to feel something superimposed on the surface of reality, but nothing had come. He'd sensed no pain or fear or anger, had caught only echoes of laughter. Nevertheless, doom tingled in his fingertips. Confused, he'd nestled a stuffed panda among the other toys.

Gabriel came home during the weather report.

"How was Sunday school?" Enoch asked.

"Didn't do much," Gabriel said, slumping beside him on the couch. "They had psychologists for the kids, and us teachers, we just hung around."

"Are the kids upset?"

"Not as much as you'd think," Gabriel said. "If they're scared at all it's because their parents have freaked out."

"Well, Gabriel, there is a killer out there," Enoch said, muting the TV.

"Yeah, and there's drunk drivers and rickety amusement park rides and temporary tattoos laced with LSD," Silver said. He loomed behind the couch, arms crossed over his chest. "Just because you're scared doesn't mean the kids have to be."

Enoch glared up at Silver. "Oh, so to hell with the curfew, right? Why don't we just corral the kids into pens and let this guy pick them off one by one?"

"Look, life's a bitch and they'll find that out soon enough," Silver said, voice rising. "In the meantime, let them be kids."

"You mean let them be victims!" Enoch said.

Gabriel sighed and left the room.

It was the girl's grandparents who finally came to Enoch. Ana and Enrique Velasquez were still fairly young; Enoch guessed Ana had only recently turned fifty. He invited them in and offered them coffee. They settled on the sofa but declined the offer. Enoch made no pretense of wondering why they'd asked to see him. He said nothing, and waited for them to begin.

"We've been praying for the police to find whoever did this to our Monica," Enrique said in a husky voice. "They've been working so hard, but if we don't find this person soon. . . ."

"We may never find him," Ana said. "Or worse, he could kill another child."

"What about the kids who were playing with Monica?" Enoch asked. "What did they see?"

"Oh, they're only babies themselves." Ana wiped her eyes. "They try to help, but their stories make little sense."

"What do you mean?"

Enrique shook his head. "They still don't know the difference between real and make-believe. They confuse what really happened with fantasies about their imaginary friends."

"What are they saying? It might help."

The couple glanced at one another, eyes betraying the many hours spent rehashing details, the days of pain augmented by uncertainty. Enrique twisted a handkerchief helplessly and Ana took that as her cue.

"They say a boy visited them after school, that he showed up every day for weeks. They say 'boy' but we think they mean a young man, maybe your age or so," Ana said with a sigh. "The sheriff says it's common for these. . .people. . .to hang around children until they gain trust."

"Except maybe there was no man at all," Enrique said, crumpling his handkerchief. "No one we've talked to remembers a man playing with the children. And the kids say only they could see him, that one of their games was to walk down the streets with him and laugh when he made fun of people. They say he made things float and did tricks for them and all sorts of nonsense."

"Tricks?" Enoch asked.

"Tricks," Enrique said louder, impatient. "Pulling coins out of their ears, turning stones into frogs."

"They've got a psychologist trying to make sense of it," Ana said, placing a thin hand on her husband's knee. "But we can't even get a description out of them. 'Tall' they say, but to second graders probably everyone seems tall. Brown hair and eyes, Hispanic, but that doesn't help. That describes ninety percent of the men in the neighborhood. The sheriff says maybe they're in shock, or that this animal threatened to hurt them if they told."

"But you don't believe that," Enoch said to Enrique.

The man looked old now, decades older than when they'd arrived. For a moment he looked surprised by Enoch's statement, then suspicious, but then his eyes filmed over with fatigue. "It must be obvious. I'm too tired to hide my feelings anymore. These kids seem to be enjoying their secret. They don't tell because they don't want to. They saw Monica go off with him--"

"No, that's not right," Ana interrupted. "At least, that's not what they say they saw. They say he and Monica. . .disappeared."

The three were quiet for a while, only the whirr of the ceiling fan staving off complete silence.

"But she was found in the lot by someone else," Enoch said eventually. "So the children must have left. They didn't see Monica afterward." He paused. As gently as possible, he asked, "Was it very bad?"

"Not very," Ana said distantly. After a moment, she seemed to come back to herself. "She was seven years old. He slit her throat. He licked it." Revulsion tightened her lips.

"DNA," Enoch said hopefully.

Enrique tsked and flicked a dismissive hand. "The saliva was contaminated before they could do anything with it. Useless technology."

As Enoch walked the couple to their car, their sorrow weighed him down, crushed his lungs with a landslide of grief. He spoke in an effort to quell his empathy. "I'll do what I can," he promised. "How are her parents?"

"Heartbroken," Ana said simply. "Their baby girl's dead. And if Monica can die like this, I don't think God gives a damn what happens to any of us."

When they drove away, Enoch saw Ana Velasquez clutching at the collar of her blouse. He knew she was reaching for the cross she didn't wear anymore.

Enoch wished his gift had come before Mother died. Gift he had no doubt it was, but it often confused him. The end result was always positive--a toddler found, a hit-and-run solved, an old man's death avenged--but when Enoch cast about for his invisible clues, there seemed a bubble separating the energies from any moral judgment.

He detected fear and identified it as such, but whether it came from a lost child or from a drunk driver who'd just hit a pedestrian, Enoch felt it the same way. Likewise, anger was anger, no matter who it came from or why. Enoch had to piece things together himself. It brought him closer to the dark side than he would've liked.

The next evening, Enoch returned to the lot behind the grocery, but too many emotions had overlapped the original events. And the more Enoch thought about it, the more it bothered him that even soon after Monica's death he'd found nothing but good feelings swirling in the lot. The children's laughter haunted him in ceaseless echoes. Had Monica gone laughing to the end?

Enoch paced his small town's dark streets after work, convinced that the murder had to have occurred somewhere other than the lot. Walking, he felt nothing but the unvoiced fears of parents who dragged their kids inside at twilight and a strange longing, a yearning pressed deep into the sidewalk by a pair of restless feet. He wondered who it had come from. Someone young maybe, dreaming of escape.

He followed the longing until he became twisted in its fruitless spirals and finally ended up on his own doorstep. Enoch shook his head. Somewhere along the way his tired feet must have taken over and led him home. Resigned, he took the hint his feet were giving him and went in for the night.

Silver had a girl there. They stood in the kitchen drinking sodas and flirting. Silver grudgingly introduced Emily, and Enoch noted the girl was shaped like Susan--tall with wide, lush hips. Enoch remained in the kitchen, ignoring Silver's furtive gestures for him to beat it, and fixed himself a sandwich. When it became obvious Enoch wasn't leaving, Silver suggested he and Emily do so and he went in search of his keys.

Enoch swallowed a mouthful of ham and bread. He felt his stomach do a slow, sick roll as he realized what he had to do before Silver came back. Traitor, his soul whispered, but he didn't want to come home and find this girl crying like Susan.

"Hey, Emily?" he said. "I need to tell you something."

"Yeah?" She smiled uncertainly and sat beside him at the wobbly kitchen table.

"Silver didn't break up with Susan, he tried to rape her and now she won't speak to him," Enoch said in a rush. "If you don't believe me, ask Susan, or even Silver. You'll know if he's lying. Just please be careful tonight. Don't be alone with him."

Emily's jaw dropped. She didn't have a chance to say anything before Silver walked in, but Enoch was relieved to see her jump when Silver touched her shoulder.

"What's wrong?" Silver asked. He squinted at Enoch.

"Nothing. I was just telling Emily about work at the factory," Enoch said.

"Then I must have jerked you awake," Silver said to Emily. "C'mon."

Emily stared at Enoch as she stood. When she looked again at Silver, Enoch saw her reappraising his brother. It was something he'd had to do himself lately.

Gabriel and Enoch were splitting a pizza in front of the late-late show when Silver slammed open the front door, his face bloody.

"You fuck!" He lunged at Enoch. The sofa flew backwards, and they landed in a heap on the floor. "You told her!"

"Told who what?" Gabriel said, trying to pry them apart.

"Not much fun when they fight back, is it, Silver?" Enoch ducked as Silver swung at him.

"When who fights back?" Gabriel said, squeezing between them.

"He's a rapist," Enoch yelled. "He tried to rape Susan and he tried to rape someone else tonight. That's why his beautiful face is all scratched up."

"Silver?" Gabriel fell back on his haunches and stared at his brother's bloody face. "Is that true?"

"Of course not," Silver said, throwing Enoch back. "He's lying."

"Oh, Silver," Gabriel breathed. "What would Mom have--"

"Shut up about Mom! Mom's dead! She killed herself." Silver stood, face contorted with fury and the sting of salty tears in his scratches. "When are you two going to wake up? Mom's dead and we're alone and nothing makes sense anymore!" He stomped toward the door, just turning back long enough to sneer, "Oh yeah, another brat's dead. Your gift's working wonders, Enoch."

When Silver was gone, the screen door slamming in his wake, Gabriel staggered down the dark hallway to the bathroom. Enoch lay on the floor and listened to his brother vomit. He didn't feel too good himself.

Enoch felt eyes on him. He knew it was just police surveillance in the dark playground, and that his presence was understood and accepted, but it still distracted him. Did the police consider him a kook, or had he already proven himself? But since Enoch couldn't read minds, he tried to set that aside.

At each murder scene--behind the grocery, in the park, near the library, and now beside the school swings--Enoch had felt wonder, joy, excitement, but never pain or fear. He'd heard only echoes of laughter, the high-pitched giggles of seven-year-olds. Sometimes he caught a whiff of anxiety, but that came from the police officers combing the area for nonexistent clues. The children's ghostly friend claimed a willing victim once a week, and still they held their secret tight behind baby teeth.

Depressed, Enoch left the playground and immediately became caught in what he'd come to think of as "the wanderer's steps." Like many times before, the yearning was strong enough to drag him into its endless circuit of the neighborhood. He didn't need to think, merely let it tangle him in its web of self-absorption.

His feet occupied, Enoch's mind wandered--not far, only to the second obsession in his cloistered life. Silver wasn't speaking to him, which was just as well, since he didn't trust himself to speak to Silver anymore either. Silver hadn't brought any girls home since Emily, but Enoch knew there were others. Whenever they phoned, he told them everything he could, and if they continued to call, he refused to take messages. Enoch had considered reporting Silver to the police, but he hesitated after talking to Gabriel.

They'd been in the backyard, squeezed into the old rubber slings of their rusted swing-set. Enoch was peeling an orange while Gabriel fanned himself with a news circular.

"You told Emily?" Gabriel asked, amazed.

"I had to," Enoch said. "If Silver was willing to hurt Susan, he'd hurt anyone."

"Maybe not." Gabriel squinted into the sunset. "Maybe he could only hurt Susan, and only because he loved her."

Enoch couldn't believe his ears. "Have you forgotten what Emily had to do to him?" he said, fists clenching.

"Maybe you scared her and she just overreacted."

"Bullshit! We should do something. Mom would want us to protect those girls."

Gabriel took Enoch's orange before Enoch could squeeze it dry. "Mom would want us to take care of each other," he said, avoiding his brother's angry gaze. "She told us to stick together, that we'd need each other."

"If Silver's sick, he's sure as hell not going to get any help unless we force him."

Gabriel frowned. "Mom didn't like force."

"Tell Silver that."

Now Enoch woke to his surroundings and found himself on his own doorstep again. Had he wandered off the yearning trail to come home automatically? This time he didn't think so.

Gabriel sat in front of the TV, preparing the lesson plan for his next Sunday school session. He saw Enoch's frown and muted the TV. "What's wrong?"

"Have you been walking around town?"

"Well, the Cutlass is dead," Gabriel said, shrugging.

"No, I mean some serious walking. All over town, over and over again. Is that you?"

"Yeah, I guess," said Gabriel. "So?"

"How long have you been doing it?"

Gabriel looked alarmed. "Doing what?"

"Walking," Enoch said impatiently.

"I don't know, since Mom died."

Enoch dropped onto the couch beside his brother. "Why do you want to leave?" he demanded. "Are you that unhappy?"

"I'm not unhappy," Gabriel said. "I just walk."

"You want to leave us."

Gabriel did not argue. He simply curled into his corner of the couch and looked at Enoch. "You can feel that?"

"No, damn it. I'm an idiot. I had to go walking around at night looking for a killer before I realized something was wrong." Enoch jabbed the remote's "off" button and rubbed his face in frustration. "I wasn't even sure it was you. I just knew it came from this house."

Gabriel smiled in disbelief. "You didn't think it was Silver, did you?"

"I don't know Silver anymore. And I guess I don't know you either."

"We all have our gifts from Mom. You find lost kids, Silver attracts anyone he pleases, and I...I keep secrets," Gabriel sighed.

"How can you want to leave? You told me just the other day that Mom wanted us to stick together."

"Why do you think I'm still here?"
"Mom brought us here, she taught us how to survive here, she wanted us to be a family here," Enoch said, voice rising. "You don't know what's out there. You need family."

"Enoch," Gabriel said, curling tighter, "there is no family. Without Mom we're falling apart. Look at you and Silver." He clenched his eyes shut, smearing tears away. "You're right. Mom taught us how to survive, and now we're not so different from anyone else. Why shouldn't I leave?"

"Because we are still different," Enoch insisted. "It's because we're a family that we've been able to become more normal. Without each other, we'd be no better than any of our kind before Mom."

"Mom is dead." Gabriel's voice was flat, as if he were willing himself not to feel anything. "She killed herself. Doesn't that tell you something?"

"Yes," Enoch said, struggling not to cry, too. "It tells me that she understood death is a part of human life, and she was willing to accept even that."

"Then she died for nothing, Enoch. Because we are not, never have been, and never will be human."

Gabriel stalked out of the house and into the dark. Enoch wanted to chase after him, but he knew it was pointless. Doom tingled in Enoch's fingertips again, but he didn't know why. There were so many cracks, an abyss might break open anywhere.

Enoch left work early to walk the streets in the late afternoon. Plainclothes officers were already making the rounds, but he felt he had to get out there, too. The parents of the dead children no longer believed he would find anything, and, honestly, neither did he, but if one more adult on the streets made any difference, Enoch vowed to be there.

The fear oiling the atmosphere had taken on the pungency of panic. Every parent feared their child would be next, and they went to extreme lengths to ward off the nightmare. New chain-link fences made prisons of every yard, children were locked away like dolls in dollhouses, and the few that were allowed to go to school were rushed to their parents' cars seconds after the 3:30 bell.

When sunset approached, Enoch climbed the bleachers of the high school stadium to watch the sun go down. Sunset had been his mother's favorite time of day. She'd always said no matter how many hours she'd been awake, when sunset came, she felt her soul awakening. Enoch now felt no such awakening, though he often had as a child. In teaching him to be human, Mother had left him out of touch with nature.

He had thought his sixth sense was flagging, but as Enoch approached home he smelled the bitter, burned-plastic odor of anger, felt the damp clinginess of sorrow bright with heartache. He knew the anger was Silver's--Silver was always angry now. And he guessed the pained sadness was Gabriel's. Enoch thought about turning around and going back into town, but with a spark of resentment he thought, It's my house, too.

"How can you expect me to stay?" Silver was saying. "People are starting to talk. If I go, maybe he'll stop spreading these rumors."

"Except they're not rumors, are they?" Gabriel asked.

"I should beat the crap out of you for talking like that," Silver grumbled.

The two were arguing in Silver's room. From the hallway, Enoch could see Silver packing a suitcase and Gabriel sprawled out on the bed.

"You haven't really done anything yet," Gabriel said. "If you stay and get help. . .God, why, Silver? You're so smooth and good-looking, you'd never have to force them!"

"You don't understand," Silver said, flinging shirts on the bed. "I have been forcing them. What do you think this gift for attracting them is all about? They've never had a choice before. At least this way they know what I am."

"But it's not who you are," Gabriel insisted. "Susan never would have loved you if that were true."

"How can you be so sure?"

"You have a gift for making people want to be near you and instead you're pushing us all away." Gabriel sat up, hands spread helplessly. "Why?"

"Maybe we're meant to be alone. Maybe Mom was wrong to try to change our nature."

Gabriel was silent and Enoch knew he was at the end of all his half-hearted arguments. Like Gabriel himself the night before, Silver had broached that terrible question.

What if Mom had been wrong?

Pacing the streets again, careless of who might be watching or what they might be thinking, now Enoch was the lost soul. Mother had given them each great gifts, but these gifts had only fully flowered after her death. Before, Enoch had thought it unfortunate that he and his brothers had not grown into their gifts before she decided it was her time to die. Now he began to see it in a different light.

Maybe she was always redirecting the flow, he thought. Maybe she drew our powers into herself and she didn't even know it.

Then came a thought so sinister, his lungs seemed to crumple in his chest. Or maybe she did know...and maybe she liked it.

He walked faster, as though to put distance between himself and the traitorous thought. If Mother had suppressed their abilities, he told himself, it was only because she'd hoped that if they didn't know they had powers, they'd never be able to use them. Mother had wanted nothing more than for her sons to join the human race. She had weaned them from blood, chastised them for psychic leeching, played down the history of their kind, forced them to live together as a family. They walked in daylight thanks to her, ate normal food, even attended the church where they'd been baptized and made their first communions.

But when she'd died, purposefully ending what might have otherwise been an immortal lifespan, everything had careened out of control. Her sons' powers burgeoned dangerously while the family dissolved before their very eyes. Despite everything she'd taught them, they were reverting to the typical behavior of their species. All but the blood.

Enoch closed his eyes. His knees buckled. His chin slammed the pavement and he breathed in concrete grit. He wished it was the last breath he'd ever take. All this time he'd been following Gabriel's steps around, over, and through murder after murder and it had never dawned on him. Blood leaked from Enoch's skinned face and he could smell it--thick, dark jungle of temptation; wet, ripe garden of earthly delight. Forgive us, Mother, for we have sinned.

There were cautious steps beside Enoch. "Sir, are you all right?"

It was a young officer, hand on his belt but concern in his eyes. Enoch met his gaze and felt terror. Not because one brother was a rapist and the other a child killer and it must show on his face, but because there was a human being standing over him.

"Oh, it's you, Enoch," the man said, pulling him to his feet. "You're going to kill yourself trying so hard. Why don't you go home and get some rest? Let us do our part."

Instead of soothing him, the calm, considerate tone only frightened Enoch more. He felt like a thief whose disguise was slipping. He managed to nod in a gesture of acquiescence and extricated himself from the helpful hands. Only once he was out of reach did Enoch feel his control returning.

"You're right," he said. "I need to go home."

"Where the hell do you think you're going?"
Gabriel looked up from his stuffed duffle bag, a pair of white socks dangling from one hand. "If Silver can go," he muttered, "so can I."

"The hell you can," Enoch growled, yanking the socks away.

"What about blood?"

Gabriel froze. Only his eyes moved, and they regarded his brother with calculation.

"I'm so stupid," Enoch said. "This damn gift and I can't see what's right in front of me. But you and Silver, you're both animals. You're fucking sick."

"Are you going to tell?" Gabriel said, facing him. "Or are you going to give me a head start?"

Enoch ignored him. "How could you? They were kids, for Christ's sake! You teach Sunday school. How could you turn on them? I thought you loved them."

"I couldn't do it if I didn't love them, if they didn't love me," Gabriel said. "What nourishment would I find in wrestling someone to the ground? In fear instead of love?" He slumped on the bed. "You should've seen the miracles their loving little hearts created. They did most of it themselves, as if they were happy to give themselves to something bigger than human life."

"So all your damn magic was stolen. All the tricks, all the games you played, came from them. It wasn't enough to murder them, you had to cheat them, too!"

"I like to think I gave them as much as I took."

"And what about their families, you piece of shit?"

Gabriel shrugged. "What's a family?"

"A family is what Mom wanted us to be," said Enoch, jaw tight. "She said no blood, Gabriel. She taught us how to live without it."

"But she tasted blood," Gabriel said, eyes lighting up like a convert's. "She killed before, before we were born and she decided to try to be human. And Enoch, what if she was wrong to try?"

Enoch almost covered his ears. "How can you say that?"

"Because I've tasted it now, too. And it makes me want to be true to what I am. Mom made her choice. But I have to make mine."

"And you're going to be a killer?"

Gabriel smiled gently, as if at a slow student. "I'm going to be free. I'm going to stop denying my nature. Eventually, Silver will, too. He's already broken away from us, and he's starting to treat humans as our kind always has."

"But we don't have to," Enoch cried, forgetting his encounter with the officer. "We've lived among humans all this time. No one can tell us apart. We don't need to feed off them, we can belong!"

"No, Enoch, we can't," Gabriel said, rising. He took his bag in hand. "You can stay here and try to fit in, but you'll always be on the outside looking in. And after a while, you'll start to act like it. You'll be the predator disguised among his prey. And finally you'll have to admit to yourself that Mother was wrong."

Gabriel kissed his brother's cheek and squeezed his shoulder. Then the screen door slammed shut one last time.

Don't let him go! Don't let him get away, Enoch's mind screamed, but he wasn't thinking about dead children, or brotherhood, or a vow to their mother. He was thinking about being alone, abandoned to himself and questions he'd never wanted to ask. Enoch fell to the floor and cried, fearing that with every tear his humanity fled him and that, in the end, nothing would remain but the vampire.

Originally published in Dreams of Decadence.