“Have you seen them?” asked Tangerine.
Amos shook his head. He’d looked, but all he ever saw were drifts of fog, occasionally spurred into some strange eddy.
“There you go then,” she said. “Besides, if you did think they were still around, you could get vaccinated, too.”
Amos shook his head.
“But it’s just like getting a shot for polio, or measles,” said Tangerine.
Amos shook his head again. His little sister had died of measles, but everyone said that it was the Lord’s will. Amos had taken the measles, too, at the same time, and he hadn’t died.
“If the Lord wants to take you, then that’s it,” he said. “No amount of vaccinating can stand against that.”
Tangerine sighed.
“I guess you hold to some pretty strong beliefs,” she said. “Do you even get to watch television?”
“Nope,” said Amos. “That’s just a door for the devil, straight into your head.”
“My dad would kind of agree with you on that,” said Tangerine. “Not enough to stop me watching, thank heavens.”
“You watch television?” asked Amos.
“Sure. You could come down and watch it too, sometime. My place is only half a mile along the road.”
She pointed, and Amos suddenly realized that the fog was upon them. Tendrils of cold, wet whiteness were undulating past, weaving together to make a thicker, darker mass.
He looked up the mountain and could no longer see the sun. The two arms of the fog had already joined, and he would be in darkness all the way back to the village.
He must have made a noise, a frightened noise, because Tangerine took his hand.
“It’s only fog,” she said.
“Vampire weather,” whispered Amos. He tried to look everywhere at once, peering past Tangerine, turning his head, then spinning around so that somehow he ended up with Tangerine’s arms around him.
“I can’t get back,” Amos said, but even in the midst of his panic, he was thinking how wonderful it was to have Tangerine’s arms around him, and then out of nowhere her mouth arrived on his and he supposed it was a kiss but it felt more like he’d had the air sucked out of his lungs, but in a good way, it wasn’t something horrible, and he wanted it to happen again but Tangerine tilted her head and then settled her face into his neck, all warm and comfortable.
He patted her back for a little while, something he’d seen his father do once to his mother, before they’d seen that the children had noticed their embrace. Tangerine said something muffled he couldn’t hear. Then she stepped away and disentangled herself, but she was still holding his hands.
“Don’t go back, Amos. Come down to my house. You can stay with me.”
“Stay with you?” mumbled Amos. A great part of him wanted more than anything to always be with this wonderful, amazing girl, but a possibly greater part was simply terrified and wanted him to sprint back up the road and get home as quickly as possible. “I. I can’t. I have to get somewhere safe. ”
A noise interrupted him. Amos flinched, looking wildly around, arms already coming up to make a cross. But Tangerine dragged his arms down and hugged him again.
“It’s just Grandma’s car, silly,” she said.
Amos nodded, not trusting himself to speak. He could see the car now, turning in off the main road. A small white car that sent the fog scurrying away as it pulled up next to the mailbox.
The car’s headlights turned off, and the light inside came on. Amos saw a white-haired old woman in the driver’s seat. She waved and smiled, a tight smile that bore no relation to Tangerine’s open happiness.
Tangerine held Amos’s hands as they watched the little old lady get out of the car. There was something strange about the way the woman moved that Amos couldn’t quite process, how she kind of unbent herself as she rested her hands on the roof, and got taller and taller, maybe seven foot tall, with her arms and legs out of normal human proportion, and then she didn’t look like a little old lady at all.
“Oh, God, Grandma, I can’t do this,” said Tangerine, and all of a sudden Amos’s hands were free and the girl was pushing at his chest, pushing him away. “Run!”
Amos glanced back over his shoulder, only half running, till he saw that the old woman’s mouth was open, and Amos wished it wasn’t, wished he’d never seen that mouth, never met Tangerine, never gotten caught in vampire weather, and he was running like he’d never run before, and screaming at the same time.
The vampire stalked past her granddaughter, who held a necklace of crosses in her hand and wept, a girl crying for her grandmother the vampire, and for a boy she hardly knew.
Amos felt the cold, wet air against his bare neck, missed the jangle of the crosses, and knew that Tangerine had taken his protection when she’d kissed him. He wept, too, tears full as much of the hurt of betrayal as fear, and then something fastened on his coat, and he was borne down to the ground, sliding and screaming, trying to turn onto his back so he could cross his arms, but the vampire was so much stronger, her hands like clamps, gripping him to the bone, keeping him still, and he wet himself as he felt the first touch of those teeth he’d seen on his neck and then —
Then there was a heavy, horrible thumping, cracking sound, like a big tree come down on a house, smashing it to bits. Amos felt suddenly lighter, and with a last surge of desperate energy he rolled over and brought up his bracers to form a cross — and there above him was Young Franz, in full silver-embroidered coat and hat, a bloodstained six-foot silver-tipped stake in his hand. Behind him was Old Franz, and Amos’s father, and all the older brothers, and his mother and the aunts in their silver-thread shawls, argent knives in hand.
Amos sat up, and a bucketful of tainted dust fell down his chest and across his legs. It smelled like sulfur and rotten meat, and the reek of it made Amos turn his head and vomit.
As he did so, his mother came close and raised a lantern near his head. When Amos turned to her, she pushed his head back, so that the light fell clear upon his neck.
“He’s bit,” she said heavily. She looked at Amos’s father, who stared blankly, then held out his hand. Young Franz gave him the bloodied stake.
“Father.,” whispered Amos. He reached up to touch his neck. He could, quite horribly, feel the raised lips of two puncture wounds, but when he looked at his fingers, he could see only a tiny speck of blood.
“It is the will of the Lord,” said his father, words echoed by the somber crowd.
He raised the stake above his head.
Amos let himself fall back to the ground and shut his eyes.
But the stake did not enter his heart. He heard someone screaming, “Stop! Grandma! Stop!” and he opened his eyes again and tilted his head forward.
It was Tangerine shouting. She came running through the crowd of villagers, who parted quickly ahead of her but closed up behind as she faltered and stopped by the mound of ash and smoking flesh that had been her grandmother. She had his necklace of crosses in her left hand and a small golden object in her right.
“Another one,” said Amos’s mother. She raised her knife. “A young one. Ready your stake, Jan.”
“No!” shouted Amos. He twisted himself up and grabbed his father’s leg. “She’s human. Look, she’s holding crosses! She’s a person!”
Tangerine looked up from the remains of her grandmother. Her face was wet with more than fog, and her mouth quivered before she was able to get out a word.
“I–I’ve already called the police! And my dad! You can’t kill Amos!”
Amos’s father looked her up and down, the stake held ready in his hand. Then, without taking his eyes off her, he spoke to his wife.