“You might help me kill them, I guess, and I think they should die. I’ve wanted to kill Jonny since you first told me about how he picked on you, but I think we need someone else, Oskar. We need an adult like Hakan.

“You have me. Why do you need someone else?”

“You’re twelve. Who’s going to rent you an apartment? Who will buy tickets for us on the train? You think they’ll sell you tickets and let you travel by yourself? We need an adult, Oskar.”

“I don’t think I want to share you with someone else.”

“I never loved Hakan or the others, not like I love you. I grew fond of them; I was fond of Hakan; but I never loved him. You won’t be sharing me with anyone.”

“Did you kill Hakan?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“He wanted me to. They would have put him in prison for life; and he was horribly disfigured. He didn’t want to live. It was his idea.”

“Did you kill all the others?”

Eli looked at the floor for a long moment before looking up at Oskar.

“Yes.”

“Why?”

Eli thought about all the helpers she’d had over the years, throughout two centuries. She had killed each and every one of them, when it had become necessary. She shrugged:

“For various reasons: some, to keep them from being caught; some, because they could no longer live with the guilt of having killed so many boys like you; some, because they wanted more than I could give.”

“More than you could give?”

“Sex, Oskar. They wanted more than I could give. I could jack them off like I did you, but it wasn’t something that gave me any pleasure.”

“I thought you said you liked doing it to me.”

“I did; but I had already begun to love you. I never loved any of them. I was just using them.”

“How do I know you aren’t just using me?”

“Because I don’t need a boy for a helper; I need a man.”

“Will you kill me someday?”

Eli sighed:

“I don’t know, Oskar. You might tire of living someday and ask me to kill you. I’ve lived a long time, but I can’t read the future. You’ll change with the years; I won’t. I won’t kill you, unless you ask me to do it.”

“Would you drink my blood?”

“Wouldn’t you want me to?”

“Yes. It would be like I was becoming part of you.”

“I would.”

“How are we going to find a helper?”

“You don’t need to go, Oskar. I can find us one.”

“I want to go.”

“Can you sneak out?”

Oskar shrugged:

“I don’t know. Mom might hear me if I go out the door. I could jump out the window, but it’s a long ways down.”

“I can spread my wings, and you can hold onto my back. I can’t fly anywhere with you – you’re too heavy - but I can break our fall.”

“What about your clothes?”

Oskar knew Eli had to be naked to fly.

“Stuff them in your jacket and give them to me once we’re down.”

As Eli undressed and grew her wings, Oskar dressed, putting on his jacket, boots, and cap. It was cold out. He stuffed Eli’s clothes inside his jacket. They climbed onto the window sill, and behind Eli, Oskar put his arms around her neck. She spread her wings and jumped. They glided to the ground.

Once on the ground, Oskar watched as Eli retracted her wings, once again assuming her human form, that of a 12 year-old neutered boy. She was beautiful; and he loved her.

Oskar had no regrets about being castrated. He hadn’t any regrets before he knew Eli was a vampire. He didn’t have any, now. Perhaps, he wasn’t meant to be a boy. Perhaps, eunuchs were a third sex, and that’s what he was meant to be. It just seemed right. He didn’t even miss jacking off as he thought he would.

“What do we do, now?”

As Eli dressed, she said:

“We take the subway downtown to the park. Men prowl the park looking for kids, for boys mostly, but most will accept a girl, if she looks young. Some don’t care about gender, as long as the kid is young. You look like a boy; I look like a girl. We both look young. We shouldn’t have any problem attracting someone.”

“We’ll fool them, won’t we?”

“What do you mean?”

“I look like a boy, but I’m not. You look like a girl, but you’re not.”

Eli smiled:

“I’m not even human.”

“There’s that, too. I don’t guess we have to worry about getting raped or kidnapped.”

“Hardly.”

As Eli turned to walk from the courtyard, Oskar asked:

“Aren’t you taking a jacket?”

Eli wasn’t wearing one and hadn’t brought one to Oskar’s room.

“I’m not cold.”

“You’re never cold, are you?”

“No. What I am, now, doesn’t feel hot or cold. We only fear the sun.”

Oskar shuddered.

“It weirds me out, when you talk like that, like there’s more than one of you.”

“Sorry, but that’s how I feel. I feel like there’s it and me – Eli. If we haven’t fed, there’s just it, with Eli observing but unable to act; but if we’ve fed, I’m almost just Eli: never entirely; but almost.”

“I kinda get it, but you should still wear a jacket. People will wonder why you’re not wearing one if you don’t.”

“OK. I’ll get one. You want to come into my apartment? You’ve never been inside.”

“I guess.”

They went inside Eli’s apartment. Oskar didn’t see much furniture, a table, chair, and lamp in the living room, a mattress on the floor in the room that shared a common wall with Oskar’s room, an end table with a lamp on it at one end of the mattress.

Eli grabbed a coat from a closet and put it on.

“Will this be OK?”

“Sure… If you have so much money, why don’t you have any furniture, TV, or anything?”

“I have to move too often to acquire much. Sometimes, my helper will buy a TV to watch, but Hagan spent his spare time reading; he didn’t like television; and I don’t find the human drama portrayed on television relevant to my life. My experience as a human ended when I was twelve, and life then, was much different. Humans – to me – are an alien species.”

“When you talk like that it’s like you’re an alien that’s come to visit Earth.”

“Maybe I am. Maybe this virus – or whatever it is – that took over Elias’s body is from another planet. Maybe, it could only exist through the use of a host native to this planet. I don’t know.”

“You don’t think you’re the Devil’s spawn?”

“In two hundred years I’ve never seen evidence for the existence of either God or Satan. Crosses or Holy water have no effect on me. I can see my bodily reflection in a mirror. Even if mirrors don’t seem to reflect the thing inside me, they reflect the physical changes it causes to my body.”

“Why do you have to be invited in?”

“I don’t know. Perhaps – and this is just a guess on my part – the first of my kind to visit Earth had a physical body, one that couldn’t long exist in Earth’s atmosphere. Perhaps, to merge with a human that first time, the human had to give its consent, invite the creature to come in. Perhaps, the creature promised the human something, eternal life, for instance. Maybe, since then, we have to be told to come in to enter a structure. I don’t really know. All I know is that I can’t enter a place without a verbal invitation.”

“What happens if you go in a place you haven’t been invited into?”

“The virus or creature makes to leave the place and my body, if my body is still inside the structure, and the virus is what keeps this body alive. Without it, my body would become a dried up husk. I would die. Eli would die.”

“It’s too much for me. I don’t understand it.”

“Oskar…I’ve thought about it for two hundred years, and I don’t understand either.”

“I guess we can go, if you’re ready.”

Eli pulled some subway tokens out of her pocket.

“I have some tokens, so we don’t have to buy any. The less contact we have with adults – until we find the one we’re looking for – the better.”

“Cool.”

Oskar looked back at the windows to his apartment as they walked from the courtyard. They were dark, his mother apparently still asleep. He realized that tomorrow night he might look back on them for the last time. How his life had changed since that night he first met Eli.

It took them less than a half hour to walk to the subway station where they boarded a train for downtown. About 11:00 PM, they were the only kids their apparent age on the train, and they attracted looks from other passengers. Once they neared the park, three boys, two about Oskar’s age and one several years older, fifteen or sixteen, boarded the train.

They sat on a bench across and forward of Oskar and Eli. The two younger boys didn’t lift their gazes from the floor, but the older boy stared at Oskar and Eli. When the train stopped at the park exit, they got off the train along with Oskar and Eli.

As they walked toward the center of the park, Oskar kept glancing over his shoulder.

“They’re following us.”

“Maybe. They may just be going our way. There’s a restroom where men go to meet boys. That’s where we’re going. It could be that, as we are, they are looking for a man or for men.

“Where do you think you’re going?”

Oskar and Eli turned to look. The older boy spoke in English with a heavy East European accent. Oskar understood English, of course. He spoke it, as does over ninety percent of Swedes, but he wasn’t expecting English and the boy had a thick accent. He said:

“Huh?”

Eli said nothing.

“This is my territory. Only my boys work it.”

He looked more closely at Eli.

“Are you a girl?”

Eli said nothing. Oskar answered without thinking.

“Eli’s not a girl.”

The boy laughed.

“Eli is a girl’s name; and she looks like a girl. Maybe I need a girl for my stable. Maybe, I can use both of you.”

Now that Oskar was expecting English, he could better understand the boy, but ignorant of the ways of the boy’s world, he didn’t understand his meaning.

“Stable? Do we look like horses?”

Normally, confronted by such a boy - a tough - Oskar would have been about to piss himself and probably would have pissed himself; but he was with Eli; and he knew Eli wouldn’t allow the boy to hurt him.

“Go away. Leave us alone if you know what’s good for you.”

Oskar felt his chest swell with pride. He had never stood up to Jonny and his gang; he’d told Jonny, “No,” but he hadn’t backed up the declaration. He’d never hit back or balled up his fists as he did, now.

“Tough Guy, huh? I’ll bash out your teeth, so you won’t bite when you blow me; and I’ll fuck your girlfriend.”

Oskar looked at Eli, expecting a reply or action from her; but Eli said nothing; she did nothing. The boy stepped closer to Oskar, giving him a sharp shove on one shoulder, spinning him around and sending him back. Oskar fell onto the graveled path on his butt. The boy picked up a fist size rock.

“I’m going to bash out your teeth, you little queer. You’ll be like him.”

He gestured with a nod of his head toward one of the younger boys.

“Show him, Lesha.”

The boy opened his mouth. All his front teeth had been knocked out.

“You won’t look so pretty, but you’ll give good head.”

He took a step toward Oskar, who had no doubt that the boy did intend to bash out his teeth. Why didn’t Eli do anything? He looked up at her.

“Eli…”

Oskar was still seated on the path. Leaning forward, the boy knocked off Oskar’s cap and grabbed hold of his hair, tilting back Oskar’s head. He cocked the hand with the rock in it.

“Smile,” the boy said.

“Eli!”

Eli stepped between Oskar and the boy, her hand on the boy’s upraised arm and spoke in a soft voice, sounding more like a girl than she ever had to Oskar, who had noticed when they first met, that although she looked like a girl, she spoke like a boy.

“Don’t hurt him. I’ll do whatever you want. You can fuck me, if you want.”

“I can bash out his teeth and still fuck you.”

“But I can show you things I wouldn’t, if you hurt him. I can do things I wouldn’t, if you hurt him.”

She took off her coat and her hat.

A visible change came over the boy. His breath quickened. He let go of Oskar’s hair; he dropped the rock. He undid his coat. His hands dropped to his belt; he fumbled at unbuckling it.

“No, not here. Let’s go behind a bush. I don’t want him to watch.”

Eli nodded toward Oskar.

“I want him to watch.”

Shaking her head, Eli placed her hand on the boy’s crotch. He gasped, inhaling sharply.

“Fuck!”

The boy panted.

“OK…OK…we’ll go behind a bush. Watch him,” he said to the two younger boys.

“You move,” he said to Oskar, “and I will bash out your teeth.”

He and Eli went behind some bushes, which, although without leaves, hid them from Oskar and the others. Her back to the boy, Eli laid her coat on the snow, dropped her jeans, revealing her naked buttocks to the boy, stepped out of her jeans, and lay down on her coat.

In the dark, the boy couldn’t tell she wasn’t a girl.

His cock was hard. It wasn’t big; it was bigger than Oskar’s had been, but it wasn’t much over five inches, if it were that.

He dropped to his knees between Eli’s spread legs and lurched forward covering Eli’s body, his face beside hers, his throat alongside her mouth. His hand groped between her legs.

“What the fuck?”

His next utterance was a piercing scream. Eli’s arms were around his neck; her teeth were buried in his throat. His blood ran into her mouth.

The boy tried to pry her hands loose; but he couldn’t. He tried to push her away; but he couldn’t.

Upon hearing the boy’s scream, the hair on the back of Oskar’s neck stood up. He had asked to see Eli kill, but it was enough to hear her kill. He wasn’t about to go closer. The two younger boys – younger than the boy Eli was killing not younger than Oskar – looked at each other. Oskar said:

“If you want to live, you had better run.”

They ran; it took all Oskar’s will to keep him from joining them.

Eli lapped and slurped the blood flowing from the boy’s throat, caring not about how much noise she made, thinking not about Oskar or the other boys, desiring only the blood that flowed into her mouth and down her throat. The boy no longer struggled.

Then, the blood stopped flowing; the boy’s heart, lacking blood to pump, quit beating. He was dead. Eli licked the blood from his throat.

Hearing no more noise, Oskar walked behind the bush. The boy lay on Eli. Looking up at Oskar, she growled, showing her fangs in the moonlight. For an instant, Oskar saw that thing inside her. He pissed his pants; his bowels let go.

“Oskar.”

She stood beside him; the boy lay on his back. She was Eli once more.

The boy’s blood covered her face and mouth; it soaked her sweater.

“Are you all right?”

“I shit my pants.”

Eli smiled.

“I know. I can smell it.”

She looked down at herself.

“We’re both a mess I guess.”

“Are we still going to look for a helper?”

“No. We better leave. Someone might find him;” she nodded toward the boy; “and besides, I don’t think either of us are particularly attractive right now. At least, I fed.”

“You can’t ride the subway like that.”

Eli stood in the snow barefoot and naked from the waist down, her face and sweater covered in blood. She bent over picking up a handful of snow and scrubbed her face with it.

“What happened to the other two?”

“I told them to run. Is that OK?”

Eli shrugged.

“I guess. I doubt they’ll go to the police, and he was enough.”

Walking over to the boy, she rummaged through his pockets, pulled out a knife and a wad of bills, and tossed them to Oskar.

“He won’t need these.”

Oskar slipped the knife in his pocket and thumbed through the bills. The boy had almost 5000 kronor.

Eli picked up her coat; it, too, was soaked in blood, but only on the inside. She pulled on her jeans, slipped on her boots, and put on her coat. Oskar picked up a handful of snow and scrubbed off her face some of the blood she’d missed.

They had killed the boy; well, Eli had killed him; but Oskar had helped or, at least, stood by, doing nothing to stop it. He was her accomplice, and according to the law, equally guilty. He had fantasized murder, fantasized killing Jonny, fantasized, even, killing others, strangers; he had fantasized killing boys as Hakan had, before he knew Hakan had killed that boy, such a short time ago, but – a lifetime ago, back when Oskar was a boy, back before he was a murderer.

Oskar looked at the boy, who lay on his back in the snow, his pants down around his knees, his cock, drained of blood, limp and small. Only his open eyes showed horror. In death, his features were relaxed; and except for the horror still evident in his eyes, he seemed at peace.

He was the first Oskar had helped murder; but Oskar knew he wouldn’t be the last.