Our breaths fogged the windows. Wendy rubbed her hand against the inside of the windshield to clear away the condensation. She flipped the heater switch to maximum.

I wiped the lower corner of the passenger window and peered at the exterior mirror. In the reflection, Dragan and the other two vânätori grew smaller and smaller.

Wendy drove faster. At the intersection at the bottom of the hill we slid through the traffic signal.

I motioned to the left. “That way.”

Wendy skidded the Dodge through the turn. Suddenly, the streetlights went dark. It seemed as if doom had found us.

“Aw hell,” Wendy said. “Ice must’ve snapped the power lines.”

The swirling mush of snow swallowed the beams of our headlamps. The world around us was dark as ink. Wendy pulled tight against the steering wheel to bring her face close to the windshield. “Even with my vision I can’t see where the road is.”

The Dodge drifted to the right. Wendy turned the wheel but the car continued to veer off the road. She pumped the brakes. The tires bounced over the edge of the pavement. We rolled off the shoulder of the road, smacked against a guardrail, and stalled the engine.

I jostled against the inside of the door. Pain burned through me as if my guts had been set afire. For the first time in my existence, I welcomed the thought of death, if for nothing else than to free me of this agony.

She restarted the car but the rear wheels spun uselessly.

“Shit.” Wendy rested her forehead against the top of the steering wheel. “Well, at least no one’s shooting at us.” She turned to me. “You all right?”

Blood pooled under my hips. The touch of death felt cold. My teeth chattered uncontrollably.

“Oh, God. Felix, your aura.”

I uncurled my fingers. The fading, trembling glow emanating from my hands resembled a match flame about to go out. I was too weak to panic as death embraced me.

Wendy unbuttoned my flannel shirt and slid her hand down along my torso. She withdrew her hand. The skin glistened with blood that turned into flakes. “Oh, Felix,” she groaned, “it was only a bullet wound. Why aren’t you healing?”

“I’ve been losing my powers.”

“Why? How?”

“I don’t know. Contamination from the nymphos? Something from the Iraq War?” I left the last option unspoken: Or maybe because I wouldn’t drink human blood.

“We can’t stay here all night.” Wendy gripped the barn coat tight across her chest and hustled out of the car. She tramped through the snow and opened my door. “There’s a building down the hill. We can take shelter there so we won’t freeze to death.”

I wouldn’t live long enough to freeze to death.

She braced my arm over her shoulder and led me down the slope through the snowdrifts toward a shadowy rectangle, which, as we got closer, turned into a large shed.

Her efforts became futile. The feeling of hopelessness gave way to a new sensation, a sadness as I resigned myself to death.

We approached a door and peeked through the small window. Inside, saddles and other riding tack lay heaped about. Wendy tried the doorknob and discovered it was locked.

She turned away from the door. Snow fell across her face. “There must be a house close by, but in this mess we could walk right past and never see it. Well, let’s improvise.” She balled the sleeve of the barn coat around her fist and smashed the window. Reaching through the broken glass, Wendy popped the door open. The place stank of horse sweat and manure. She pulled me along. My legs barely managed to carry me inside.

Wendy kicked over a stack of tarps and horse blankets and had me lie on top of the smelly mound. I held my side and stretched my legs while she draped a musty blanket over me.

My vision dimmed. My fingers and toes went numb. “Thanks for trying,” I whispered, “but the end is close.”

Wendy frowned. “Bullshit. Like I’m about to lose you. I know a little vampire first aid.” She fetched a long sliver of broken glass from the floor. She pulled her left arm out of the coat sleeve and with the tip of the glass shard, flicked the bandage from her forearm. A slice in her skin marked where the vânätori had bled her.

Wendy bunched a corner of the blanket under my head and propped me up. She held her forearm over my face and twisted the glass shard into her wound. Tendrils snaked from her green aura yet her face remained placid. She withdrew the bloody shard.

Snapshots of what had brought me to this moment flashed before me. The war in Iraq. Our tragic ambush of the Iraqi civilians. Their bodies collapsing under the red hail of our bullets. The screams of the girl I had shot in the belly. My drowning in remorse. The Iraqi vampire condemning me to this fate of wandering the earth as one of the undead. Adding to my misery, there was the guilt that made me abhor the nourishment of human blood. If there was anything I could do before I died, it would be to ask the little Iraqi girl for forgiveness.

Wendy’s hot, fresh blood dripped onto my lips. Though she was more than human, I couldn’t drink her blood. I tried to nudge her arm away.

Wendy cupped my head and forced the wound on her forearm into my mouth. Tears glistened in her eyes. “Drink.” Her whispering voice quavered as she stroked my head. “Please, this could be the only thing that can save you.”

The blood flowed over my tongue and down my throat. A great current of energy rushed through my spine, a jolt so strong that I passed out.

I WAS STANDING IN the mist beside a dark canal. The pungent odor of burnt ammunition stung my nose. Curious and a bit afraid, I took one step forward. A metallic clink sounded from under my feet. I looked down. Spent brass cartridges surrounded my military boots. Desert camouflage fatigues covered my body. An M4 carbine weighed down my arms. A sudden familiarity overwhelmed me, a sensation that yielded to a great terror. I was back at the exact place where my fellow soldiers and I had ambushed and murdered the Iraqi civilians.

In the gloom before me lay four figures. Slowly they pushed up from the ground. In the meager light, I recognized them as the Iraqi family we had mistakenly gunned down.

Shouting in fright, I retreated several steps and readied my weapon to defend myself. But the carbine was gone. I lifted my empty hands to shield my face and glanced about for a way to escape.

The four figures advanced haltingly, as if struggling to balance themselves on bones shattered by bullets and grenades. A diminutive female in a pale dress led them. She was the girl I had shot. A dark blotch stained her belly, over the spot of her terrible wound.

A wave of paralysis froze my legs, and my lungs seized, damming the breath in my throat.

Coming closer, the Iraqis gave awkward smiles from faces ragged with torn flesh. The two women raised their arms, one of them offering just stumps, as our weapons had hacked off those limbs.

The little girl fixed her gaze upon me. Her eyes looked as big as they were the night I had shot her.

“Where are we?” My voice trembled.

Her tiny voice blossomed inside my head. “In the place between life and death. We’ve been waiting for you.”

“Waiting? Why?”

“Because our hatred for you is as strong as the guilt that torments you. If we are to proceed into Heaven, we must forgive.”

“Forgive me?”

“You are not responsible for what happened. Those sins belong to those who started the war. We forgive you.”

A red aura grew from each of them. My skin tingled. The envelope of an orange aura surrounded my body.

I held up my hands. My fingernails extended into talons. I started toward the Iraqis. “But I’m still a vampire.”

The little girl managed a smile. “We’ve done our part.”

All of our auras blazed, becoming brighter and brighter until I was engulfed in a blinding light like the center of the sun itself.