Diallo was trapped in his mortal memories. Persuading him to relinquish his old pa.s.sions would be perhaps Kyle's most daunting challenge.

Diallo wobbled and slumped against Kyle. He breathed heavily.

"Help me lie down," Diallo said. "I must rest, then feed again."

Kyle helped Diallo onto the bed. His father reclined against the pillows.

A small cooler sitting nearby held several packets of blood. Kyle retrieved one and pierced the top. He handed it to his father.

"Drink this, Father. It will nourish you."

"What is it?" Diallo frowned.

"Blood," Kyle said. "Human blood. In this age, we live on blood that has been packaged like this."

Diallo looked doubtful. Kyle demonstrated how to squeeze the packet and draw the fluid between the lips.

Diallo frowned, tried to mimic him.

He vomited explosively.

"I cannot feed on this!" Diallo flung the packet across the room. "The blood tastes foul."

"But you must adapt to it," Kyle said. "It is a safe way for us to nourish ourselves. We cannot hunt and kill prey, Father."

Diallo dropped against the pillows. Sweat had broken out on his face.

Kyle again attempted to feed him the packaged blood. Diallo gagged.

"I need live prey," Diallo said. "Bring me a human"

"You don't understand what you're asking me!"

"I need a live human" Diallo coughed. "Or I fear I will die."

Kyle paced. His father demanded the impossible. He had not hunted a human in decades, and found the idea inimicaloffensive, even-to his nature. He was not a predator. He counted humans as his friends and confidants. How could he prey on them? Mamu had been like a brother to him.

His gaze flicked over Mamu's corpse.

Father needed to feed on him. Now, he needs another. Mamu's death caused me sorrow, but I shall go on, for it was for a great purpose, my father's survival. What would it hurt me to kill a stranger to keep him alive?

The coldness of Kyle's thoughts frightened him. He considered himself a civilized vampire, a lover of culture and art, with refined tastes and habits. Yet he was thinking of regressing into the kind of vampire that he despised: the ruthless predator.

He went to Diallo. Hunger twisted his father's face. A face so much like his own.

Diallo's hand found his, squeezed tightly.

"Hunt for me, my son," Diallo whispered. "Save me ""

He had waited almost one hundred seventy years to find his father. Was a human's life worth that much? A human would never live to such an advanced age.

He could not deny his father.

He would not.

He would do anything to keep Diallo alive.

Kyle covered his father's hand with his own.

"I'll return soon," he said.

Kyle drove the Lexus sport utility into town.

Briefly when he had climbed in the vehicle, he'd thought about Mamu and how he typically drove Kyle everywhere that he needed to travel. Then he cleared memories of his friend out of his thoughts. He could not afford to think of any humans in kind, familiar terms, not while he was engaged on this mission. Nothing could distract him from his purpose.

He was a good but cautious driver. Mother had warned him about the pitfalls of automobiles. Humans are reckless, she had taught. It is far too easy for you to be ensnared in a collision; think of the furor you would cause if the humans witnessed you walking away from a head-on wreck, unscathed. Or what if you were to lose consciousness and they took you to one of their hospitals and discovered your unusual blood ... Kyle could not quiet her somber voice of wise advice.

As he motored down the steep road, the town unfolded before him, lights twinkling. It was fifteen minutes past eleven.

He hoped that most of the residents had taken to bed. He could not risk being seen.

He turned onto a residential street. Porch lights glimmered on many of the ranch-style homes.

He remembered the last time he had hunted. He had been one hundred and twenty-seven years old, living in Paris. He and his mother had gone to the theater one evening, and after the performance, they followed a young couple along the city streets. Mother led the hunt. She swept toward the couple and forced them into a dark alley with the power of an unstoppable gale. She fell upon the man; Kyle took the woman. He would always remember the terror that had shone in the woman's eyes as his hands grasped her shoulders in an iron grip ... the sigh of pleasure that escaped her when he sank his fangs into her warm, tender neck ... and the cloying scent of her perfume mingled with the coppery odor of fresh blood.

A delicious shiver coursed along his spine and rattled through his arms, making his hands tremble on the steering wheel. But nausea followed soon after. The thought of touching his lips to germ-ridden human flesh seemed so repulsive, so primitive.

But he could never forget the rapture of sucking blood directly from an artery and into his mouth.

He reached an intersection. He turned onto a road that appeared to be darker, with fewer homes.

He parked in front of an unlit house. A nearby elm tree concealed the Lexus in additional covers of darkness.

Still, the luxury sport utility was glaringly conspicuous in the humble town. He regretted that he had allowed Mamu to acquire the vehicle. However, he reminded himself that hunting amongst the townspeople had never been part of his original intent.

He climbed out of the truck. The thump of the closing door echoed down the desolate street.

He drew his leather gloves more tightly across his hands. Perspiration coated his palms.

He had never hunted alone. Mother had always accompanied him.

But her teachings returned to him: You are a prince of the night. Use darkness to your advantage, revel and cloak yourself in it. At night, the world belongs to us.

A breeze swirled around him, carrying the scent of flowers and the singing of crickets and other creatures.

The world belongs to us ...

His eyes slid shut.

Like a man submerging a net in a river in search of a fish, Kyle cast his mind into the atmosphere. He sought the warm pulse of a human life. Someone young, but not a child. An adolescent, yes, with ripe blood that would nourish his father.

Within seconds, he had found one.

His prey was a few blocks away. Not too far to travel by foot. A distance he could cover rapidly.

He stretched forward, and to a human eye, he would have appeared to vanish, like a flickering shadow. But he was moving, not relying on sight for direction, but trusting solely in the psychic signal that throbbed in his mind.

He arrived in the backyard of a small house. A wooden fence encircled the yard.

Crumbling concrete steps led to a white door. He tried to open the door. Locked.

He waved his hand across the lock, and it disengaged with a soft click.

In addition to tremendous strength and speed, each vampire possessed special gifts. He had the power of telekinesis: the talent to move physical objects by employing psychic force. He could lift an object that weighed several hundred pounds without exerting any physical effort. The ability came in handy. No door was ever closed to him.

He waited outside the doorway. Silence. No one shouted in alarm or came running. But he sensed a human in the room beyond the door, the individual he desired.

He paused.

Once he went inside the house, he could not turn back. His carefully cultivated image of himself as a sensitive, sophisticated creature would be ruined. He would become a predator.

Hunt for me, my son. Save me.

He had waited a lifetime for an opportunity to see his father. How could he turn away from doing what was needed to ensure his father's survival? If he had to become a predator ... so be it.

Quietly, he pushed through the door.

He was in a cramped, brightly lit kitchen. Chipped paint on the walls. Pieces of tile missing from the floor. A wobbly set of chairs surrounded a wooden table heaped with papers and cups.

A young black woman was at the counter, her back turned to him. She poured a bright red fluid from a pitcher into a gla.s.s.

For an absurd moment, Kyle thought he had wandered into the household of a vampire who was about to feed.

But it wasn't blood, of course. It was some sort of punch drink.

Beyond the doorway, Kyle heard children chattering excitedly.

He only wanted the girl.

She turned with the container in her hand, to return it to the refrigerator, and that was when she saw him. Her mouth spread into a startled "0." The pitcher fell out of her fingers and crashed against the floor, punch spreading like a bloodstain across the tile.

He struck her temple with the edge of his hand, knocking her unconscious. He caught her in his arms.

She was so vibrantly alive. Her head lolled to the side, exposing her smooth neck. Without touching her flesh, he felt her pulse throbbing; it was like a drumbeat echoing in his mind.

He covered her with his jacket. She was not for him. She was for his father.

He carried her out of the house and into the night.

Jahlil and the fellas cruised through town.

T-Bone drove, Poke rode shotgun, and Jahlil was sprawled in the backseat. Hip-hop banged from the speakers, loud enough to give an old man a heart attack.

The past week, no longer burdened by a stupid job, Jahlil spent his days and nights hanging with the crew. He usually rolled out of the bed at noon, played video games for a few hours, and then T-Bone would pick him up and they'd hit the basketball courts, or even better, the car wash, where they talked to all the females who came through. Come nightfall, they'd begin cruising the streets, stopping whenever they saw people they knew, or just driving and b.u.mping music.

Dad hadn't said anything to him about getting a job-yet. Jahlil could tell his old man had another plan brewing. School-another pain in the a.s.s started next week, too. He was going to enjoy his freedom while it lasted.

They were driving aimlessly down a dark street, nodding to the slamming beat, when Jahlil caught a swift movement on the periphery of his vision. Like a large, pa.s.sing shadow.

He looked through the rear windshield.

A tall man dressed in black was putting a large, covered package in the rear cargo area of a sport utility vehicle. Except the package had a pair of dangling legs.

"Stop the car!" Jahlil said. He lunged forward and grabbed a fistful of T-Bone's jersey. "Man, someone's putting a dead body in that truck!"

"What?" T-Bone lowered the volume of the music. "What the h.e.l.l you talking 'bout?"

"The Lexus we just pa.s.sed, man" Jahlil had both knees on the seat cushions and stared out the window. The man had put the body-Jahlil was sure it was a body-inside the truck and strolled to the driver's side door. "A dude was putting a body in the trunk!"

"You high as h.e.l.l and hallucinatin' s.h.i.t," Poke said. "You ain't seen nothing."

The taillights of the Lexus flared. The vehicle moved forward, away from them.

"He's getting away!" Jahlil said. "I'm not lying and I'm not seeing things. I saw him put something in the trunk that had legs like a person"

"Like a female's legs?" T -Bone said. "All nice and smooth?"

"Yeah, I think so," Jahlil said, amazed that T-Bone had seen it, too.

"Did she have long, silky hair?" T-Bone said. "Make you wanna run your fingers through it?"

"I don't know. I didn't see her hair."

"Did she have a face like Halle Berry?" T-Bone said.

Jahlil frowned. "Fellas, I'm serious."

T-Bone and Poke broke into wild laughter.

"That's the weed working on you, J," Poke said. "Chill out and enjoy the ride, man"

"Whatever," Jahlil said. The Lexus had rolled out of sight. He began to wonder if his boys were right. Maybe he hadn't seen a man putting a body in the trunk. Maybe he had been hallucinating. He was, after all, as high as a s.p.a.ce satellite.

But if it was only an illusion, why was he so afraid?

Kyle presented the unconscious young woman to his father, like a gift.

Diallo sat up in the bed. He smiled. "Ah, my son. I am proud of you. You have saved me. As I lay here, I had felt my life slipping away."