The next thing I remember is trees. Tree after tree, whizzing past a car window as I rested my head on the glass. The window was cold and it felt good against my forehead. I lay there for a minute, eyes squinted to block out the sun, the heat from my skin diffusing out into the October air.

My mother's voice came to me in pieces at first, and I struggled to find meaning in the words. I rolled away from the window and faced her so I could block out the bird chatter and road noise from my right ear, but by then I'd already missed the point. I asked her to repeat herself.

"I said, I'd like to get my hands on whoever did this to you."

"Did what to me?"

"This!" She gestured at me with one hand while driving with the other. "Sheesh, Nathaniel, you're really out of it. Forget the police station for now. We're going to the ER. We can file a report from there."

There was nothing coherent in my thoughts to cling to. I almost let myself go back to sleep, but Mom was rambling about CAT scans and her sense of urgency finally pushed some memories to the front of my brain. Parva the vampire. The biting and the pain. It wasn't until much later that I also remembered the punching and the dying. Maybe I was repressing it, I don't know. But for now, all I could feel was relief. Parva said she never spared anyone, but she had spared me. I laughed, and Mom shot a suspicious look at me.

"Nathaniel?"

"Huh?"

"Are you sure you weren't . . ." She hesitated, but then hurried on with: ". . . doing drugs?"

"Mom. No."

"Well, how am I supposed to know? You still haven't told me what happened. You were gone all night, and then you call me from some street corner in the middle of nowhere. All I know is someone tried to strangle you, but---"

"Strangle me?"

"Don't you remember? Your neck is black and blue."

I pulled down the visor so I could see my neck in the mirror. As she said, it was covered with bruises. I couldn't help but laugh again. Parva was sucking all over my neck like an overgrown leech, and she'd left her love bites to prove it. She gave one hell of a hickey, that was for sure.

Mom was staring at me in shock, and that's when I realized, to my frustration, that I'd said some of those thoughts out loud. What exactly had I said? I decided I didn't care. I opened and closed my hands, watched my fingers curling in toward my palms and reaching out into open air. Not dead. I'd looked the Medusa in the eye and survived. I felt like a god.

"What's going on with you?" Mom asked.

It would be no use trying to explain about Parva. Judging by the look on Mom's face, anything I said was going to be taken for a drug-induced hallucination. I had a suspicion that this was going to cause trouble for me down the line.

"Nothing," I said.

She was quiet for a moment. Then she said, "We don't need a hospital, do we?"

"I don't think so."

"The police?"

Right. Like they would believe me. Even if they did, it's not like they could do anything to stop someone like Parva, short of nuking the entire metro area.

"You will explain this to me," said Mom. "In detail, as soon as you snap out of whatever it is you need to snap out of. Do you understand me?"

"Yes, ma'am."

She drove me home. We went into the house through the garage. It wasn't until I was inside, with the garage door closed behind me, that I realized what a relief it was to be out of the sun. Everything was painful out there, too bright and way too clear.

"Come on, let's get you something to eat," Mom said. She ushered me into the house and set me up on the sofa with cable and a peanut butter sandwich. This was the way she operated. The more confused and angry she got, the more she mothered me.

I took a bite of the sandwich, but nothing in it appealed to me and I put it back on the plate. On TV, a panel of actresses talked about the horrors of bad haircuts while the audience laughed. I muted the show but left the television on so I could watch it through heavy lids.

"I'm going to call work and tell them not to expect me back," Mom said from the kitchen. "I want to keep an eye on you for a while."

Guilt twinged deep in my conscience. She couldn't miss work. When she missed work it meant no overtime, and without overtime, she couldn't pay bills, or so she repeated to me any time I begged money for anything. She wouldn't let me work, though, because she wanted me to focus on getting scholarships to good colleges. So she held down two jobs and scrimped and saved pennies on things like off-brand toilet paper.

"You can go to work," I said.

"Forget it."

"Mom, I'm okay. I'm just . . ." Drained, literally. Hungry, but not for peanut butter. But I could rummage the pantry guilt-free if she left. "I'm fine."

She walked in a gave me a piercing look.

"Really," I said. "You can go. You have to, right? And I promise I'm not going to do anything dumb while you're gone. I'll just take a nap right here."

She watched for a minute, before saying, "No drugs."

I groaned. I have no idea how she interpreted that, but she finally nodded.

"I want you to be sitting right on that couch when I get back. Heart beating." She leaned down and stared me right in the face. "Pupils normal size."

"Yes, ma'am."

She sat down beside me and hugged me tight. I wasn't much of a hugger, but I didn't mind this time. She smelled good, like home and comfort and all those nice things a mother should remind you of. And she smelled warm, for lack of a better word. Like nourishment.

When she pulled away, I didn't want to let her go. She gave me a smile that was half-pleased, half-concerned.

"You sure you're okay?" she said.

"I'm sure."

She fussed around me for another minute or two, but then gave me a kiss on the head and made herself leave. I listened as she started her car and backed out of the driveway, and I kept listening to her engine as it got farther and farther away before it blended into the sounds of other traffic and disappeared altogether.

Then I was alone.

I rested on the couch for a while, wondering what I should do with myself. I'd told her I was going to take a nap, but that didn't feel like what I needed right now. The peanut butter sandwich looked about as tasty as a sock. I was thinking about getting up and digging through the kitchen when my phone rang.

The phone was in my jacket pocket. I slipped it out and looked at the icon of a telephone blinking on the screen, trying to remember why this thing in my hand was so important. There was a face on the screen, too. Someone I knew, but I couldn't bring a name to my tongue.

"Hello?" I said.

"Nate, you hot-dog-munching, bikini-wearing son of a smurf! Where the heck are you?"

The voice was like squealing brakes, grinding and metallic and way too loud. I held the phone back a few inches from my ear.

"Who is this?" I said.

"Who? I ought to come over there and kick your butt up into the back of your head. Believe me, I would if I could find you."

"I'm at home."

"I already looked there."

"Just got back."

"What's wrong with you? You sound high."

I sighed at this persistent misconception. "I'm fine, I'm just---who is this?"

"It's Porter, you idiot! What, is your screen broken? Didn't you see that I called you like eleven freaking times?"

I looked at my phone. Indeed, I'd missed exactly eleven calls from the kid with this face. Porter, he said. The name buzzed through my brain, firing synapses and flipping on switches. Yes, I knew who this was. My friend, not that you could tell by the way he was very carefully not cursing me out. He did that out of respect for my mother, who wouldn't tolerate any form of cursing from "children." It was funny that he censored himself even when we were talking over the phone.

"Porter," I repeated.

"Wake up, finally? Where in the continental United States is my three-hundred-and-ninety-nine-dollar limited edition software key?"

All at once, I remembered why I'd been on the wrong side of town in the first place. Game Toolbox. Frantic, I looked around the couch as if I'd brought it in with me and had just forgotten about it. But no such luck. I supposed there was a chance it was in the car, but I doubted it. What were the odds that I'd remembered to grab it as I'd stumbled away from the scene of my near-death?

"Dammit," I said.

"Nathaniel." There was a warning in Porter's voice. "Tell me something I want to hear."

"It's gone."

There was silence from the other side of the phone. Then rage, just barely held in check.

"If you're screwing with me," he said, "I'm gonna make it so that you have nothing to offer your future Brazilian girlfriend except money. Are you catching my drift?"

"I'm not screwing with you," I said. "It's gone. I'm sorry, but I couldn't do anything about it."

"What are you talking about? You better explain yourself, quick."

For a brief second, I thought about telling Porter all about the vampire stuff. But I knew it wouldn't work. Even though he was a fan of monsters, like me, he wasn't the type to ever let those monsters out of the safe, non-threatening little box that was "fantasy."

"You have to promise not to tell my mom," I began, covering my bases in advance, and then I focused on trying to come up with a plausible excuse. I settled on the simplest one. "I got mugged."

"Mugged?"

"After I left the con. They beat me up and took your---" Geez, this was so stupid. "They took the Game Toolbox key."

"They mugged you, took my software key, and left you your phone?"

Whoops. "Well, it's pretty old. You know. So they got mad and stepped on it. And left it there. But it still works."

"What about your wallet?"

I reached into my back pocket and pulled out the worn black wallet. There was nothing in it but my school ID and my driver's license. "Empty. That's why they beat me up."

"Wow." From the tone of his voice, Porter was finally mustering up a little sympathy. Which almost made me feel guilty, until I remembered that I'd almost died trying to get him his stupid software.

"Are you okay?" he said.

"Fine," I said. "I'll figure out some way to pay you back for Game Toolbox. It might take a while."

"Screw the money," Porter said. "You need to figure out a way to get your hands on another key. I'm not waiting three months for the official release. I'll pay for it, but you have to do the research."

Must be nice to have parents that funded all your geeky obsessions. I said, "Okay. Sorry, man."

"Don't worry about it. You still coming over tonight?"

"Maybe tomorrow."

"Got it. No problem."

He hung up. I sat there for a while, and then I got up and went upstairs to my room. I just stood there, staring at my desk, my bookshelf, not thinking. The room got darker as the sun dropped toward the horizon, and I finally walked away. I found myself in the bathroom.

The face looking back at me in the mirror was gruesome. There were bruises on my face and chin, not to mention the ones on my throat. The worst bruising was right around my left eye, and when I pressed there I felt a ghost of pain that almost brought back some very important memories. My jaw, too, was dark and sore.

But the bruises were green and mostly faded like I'd gotten them a week ago instead of a few hours. And my eyes were bright. Wide and alert. My pupils were too small like Mom had implied, but I didn't look like a victim or anything. Maybe that's why she was willing to trust that I would be okay without her.

I could smell blood on the front of my t-shirt, but the shirt was too dark for me to see any. And the blood didn't smell like mine. I removed my jacket and let it fall to the floor, and then I took off my shirt and sniffed the back collar. My blood. But not too much of it, and already dry.

I stripped off the rest of my clothes, got in the shower, and rinsed off under lukewarm water. It hurt to wash my hair. The back of my head was sore and, although I thought it was my imagination at the time, even felt a little mushy. Small amounts of blood were dried into my hair. I washed my hair until I could no longer tolerate the artificial stench of the shampoo, then I toweled off and got dressed. I wandered around in my room until instinct led me to the kitchen.

I was hungry. Once I thought of it, I realized I was starving. Of course, I was. I'd been in line at the convention since this time yesterday. I'd missed several meals already.

I dug through the pantry until I found one of those packaged cupcakes hiding behind the oatmeal. I tore it open and stuffed it into my mouth. I chewed and swallowed it while I looked for something else. I found a second cupcake and made myself eat that, too. But chewing this one, forcing it down my throat, was nothing but a chore. I took out a bag of chips, opened it, and gave the chips a sniff. Not interesting. Nothing in the pantry was interesting. I might as well have been perusing the air freshener section at the grocery store. Everything smelled like something, but that something wasn't food.

I had the annoying feeling that this was one of those rare times in my young life when I wasn't going to be able to artificially manufacture vitamins and nourishment from over-processed junk food. I was going to have to eat something that had actually been grown in a field. Or killed for its meat.

That last thought practically punched me in the gut. Yes. I needed some meat. I was a growing boy, after all. Six feet tall and, according to my annual physical, "well below the ideal BMI for a sixteen-year-old boy." I knew I was going to have to stop getting taller and start putting on muscle eventually.

I yanked the fridge door open and followed the scent of meat until I found a pound of hamburger already thawed beside the milk. I tore the plastic wrap off the package and stuffed a chunk of meat into my mouth. I rinsed it down with a gulp of milk from the jug, and then I ate another fistful of meat. I was halfway through the beef before I realized this wasn't helping, either. I tossed the beef onto the counter and walked around the kitchen, out of ideas.

I hadn't realized just how hungry I was until I'd tried to sate it and wasn't able to. Now I paced back and forth, trying not to think about the hot, yawning feeling in my gut. It wasn't just my gut that felt that way. My whole body was hot. Now that I thought about it, I'd been too hot since I woke up in the car. Feverish. Dry inside.

I regretted encouraging Mom to go to work. I had this feeling that if she was here she would be able to fix everything. I thought back to her comforting smell and it only made me hungrier. God, why did I tell her to go? I wasn't supposed to be alone right now. I needed someone. Anyone.

I stepped out onto the front porch into the cool, late afternoon air. The sun burned my eyes and skin. It was bigger than normal, brighter than normal, and everything reflected too much light and color. But the breeze felt nice against my bare arms, and it brought with it a scent that grabbed my attention. Food. The smell led me around the house and into my next-door neighbor's backyard. No food here, but the smell was stronger and it kept beckoning me forward. I followed the smell to a wooden privacy fence on the other side. I climbed over the fence and found myself in a yard I'd never seen before, a clean, well-maintained little space that smelled like fresh-cut grass. The scent of food was even stronger here, and I followed it around the near side of the house into the front yard. Suddenly I was standing on a porch two doors down from my own. I knocked on the door.

I heard footsteps inside, and then the door opened. Standing in the doorway was a person I knew, sort of. A girl from school, Emily-something. I guess I'd always known that she lived here, but she wasn't someone that would have been caught dead hanging out with me so it's not like it mattered. She was wearing a t-shirt and running shorts, and there were flecks of grass all over her skin and clothes from where she'd been giving the lawn one last mow before winter.

"Can I help you?" she said.