Walter stared through an ocean of grief.

Jeremy, the young man who had just murdered his husband, struggled with three slow moving brutes, one of whom clasped his throat.

Only half interested, he puzzled as Jeremy fought for his life, punching stomachs, elbowing throats, scrabbling desperately for the stake he’d dropped.

Why, he wondered dully, were the vampires coming in now? Clearly the blood had reverted them to monsters but why had they waited so long before climbing through the window?

Oh yes, Charla, that gun-loving Midwestern harridan. Of course, they’d been feasting on the carnage out there.

Jeremy was going down. Walter knew he should get off his ass and help that boy; that was what Jesse would want him to do.

Dear Jesse. How he’d loved him, loved him from the first moment they connected at that Preston Sturges film festival. Jesse’s tight jeans hadn’t hurt but Walter had loved him for more than that.

Fifteen years ago, same sex marriage was suddenly available at San Francisco City Hall. They’d planned to get married and be closer than ever.

And instead, Walter had gone on a sexual rampage, fucking anything that had two butt cheeks and a dick.

He’d been liberated for those mad, luscious weeks, picking up men in bars, parks, toilets; acting out wild scenes with whips and huge studded dildos. He didn’t have to be nice, didn’t have to be decent, didn’t have to be safe. A string of pulsing anuses and moaning mouths on his glistening dick. No barriers, no guilt, no negotiations.

Until the night he came down from the high and found himself fucking an asshole.

Literally; he couldn’t remember the face of the man or where he’d picked him up or how. There was just a smooth, gleaming, slightly scrawny butt, an open anus sliding on and back off his aching cock, and a smell of shit and bad body odor.

In an instant he wanted only to be in Jesse’s arms again and to be sane.

He pushed away from that butt and stuffed himself into his clothes, ignoring the confused whining from the bed, not wanting to carry with him any memory of the man’s face. Stopping only to make sure he had his wallet (“What, you think I stripped your roll? Sweetiepuss, you were up my manhole since the first moment, what do you think I am?”) he literally ran from the bad-smelling flat and down the five flights of echoing stairs past doleful exit signs and out into the street. Back to Jesse and sweet forgiveness he knew he didn’t deserve but accepted gratefully.

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Five years ago, he’d done it again.

He was a vampire! For just a few days he ran away to be evil, like he’d never dared.

Not from cruelty. Just to break once more that mold of the good little boy who played with Lincoln Logs and slept with a blue night light because he was afraid of the dark.

Now he was not afraid of the dark. He was the monster in the dark.

He went from house to house looking into windows, despising the mindless other vampires who quickly followed his lead.

And found the bossy boy and his skinny, frightened older brother.

The other vampires went mad as the well-fed little beast painted blood from his cut thumb on the window. Walter saw only the pathetic fear on the face of the older one. And despised him.

“Push him out to us and we will let you live!” he called, to drive the helpless idiot into moral confusion.

The mindless others took up the chant. “Push him out to us. Push him out to us and we will spare you.” And the kid fell to pieces, weeping with terror.

Every day in his hidey hole in the sewers Walter vowed to walk away but when the sun fell he came back like an addict to that one house to watch with disgust as the boy’s life fell apart. He hated and craved it just like he’d hated and craved that string of men fifteen years ago.

And then the culmination: the skinny kid pushed his brother out to the ravening crowd – or maybe he didn’t but Walter could tell by his face that he thought he had. And so he delivered the thumbs up: you murdered your brother and you are as just evil as you think you are.

Then the door swung shut and the other vampires turned to him for leadership. What shall we do now, master? Shall we try to get the older brother and the parents too? Guide us.

Walter strolled away, whistling.

For a while a string of them followed but they gradually lost interest and peeled away to plaster themselves to windows and doorways. He walked alone for a few more blocks, then studied his reflection, face floating over a green glowing wall clock and a case of bloodless cuts of meat.

He was sane again and he wanted only to go back to the life he’d destroyed. (By which he meant his life with Jesse; he did not think of the other life he’d destroyed, not yet.)

A few minutes later, he stood outside his and Jesse’s house. Sometime before midnight, Jesse saw him and called him in, sobbing with relief.

Of course, he would have to tell Jesse what he had done. But he put it off for the first day, unable to believe that Jesse still, still loved him.

All the goodness in Walter’s heart poured out again. He became kinder than he’d ever been, a paragon among vampires and humans, trying to be worthy of the love Jesse bestowed on him. Before he knew it, a month had passed and it was beyond his power to breathe a word of his crime. It seemed like a crazy dream.

He’d almost convinced himself it had been a crazy dream when there the boy was at the plaza, taller and with a scraggly moustache. Walter had cringed into the background and the boy hadn’t seen him.

He should have told Jesse everything right then and let him choose if he still wanted to love such a man. Instead, he hid like an oaf, avoiding public appearances or group meetings that even might involve the kid they called Jeremy.

All for nothing. There Jeremy had been in the street the other night, staring at the face he would never forget. And Jesse figured it out, he must have.

Eyes wide open, Walter had lain night after night beside the man he still loved with all his heart, feeling him grow more distant, wishing he dared to speak, wishing Jesse would speak.

Jesse, who now lay dead and lost forever, with his throat torn open and great pools of blood…

Blood?