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One

On a coldwinter’s night, Taviano scaled what passed in America for an historic building. From its roof, he hurtled to the belfry atop St. Stephen’s Catholic church. Rising out of a crouch, he turned slowly to survey the Boston streets below.

A recent snowfall had left rooftops and trees in the park across the road limned in white. Strands of lights wove in and out of metal window guards and dripped from ledges like icicles. Gold tinsel crowns and stars dangled from lampposts. Through windows, Christmas trees glistened.

Moved by the season—and sentimentality, he supposed—Taviano had come to a place he’d never before visited in many decades of wandering. As happened in recent years, though, when Christmas neared he longed for his childhood in Naples. In the nearby town of Quincy, he’d overheard references to Boston’s Little Italy. He therefore found himself in the North End to seek out those descended from his erstwhile countrymen.

He listened for a reaction from the passersby some thirty feet below. No one had noticed his body soaring overhead. Not surprising, since the Christmas bustle caught up most of the people crowding the streets. With any luck, he’d be able to relax for one night. He’d like to avoid whatever vampire claimed the area as its hunting ground, and continue to dodge the attention of any humans.

Low temperatures had everyone below on Hanover Street bundled in coats and scarves. His own thin black shirt and trousers—ideal for quick movement but not for passing unseen—would invite comment should someone spot him. A single observer would pose no trouble. He’d simply modify a memory or two and be on his way. But using preternatural gifts meant relaxing his tight control on the demon that shared his body. He hadn’t fed it in a few days for lack of a deserving victim. Hunger would make it more difficult to influence.

Far better if he could escape notice in the first place.

From inside St. Stephen’s voices rose, singing their devotion. It was “Silent Night” though he’d learned the song with different words. It was barely eight-thirty and he could identify forty-seven adults and children in the nave below. The scent of incense drifted to him, mixed with candle wax, communion wine, and boughs of evergreen.

Christmas customs had greatly changed over the decades. That was something he knew mainly from spying through windows and listening to radio and television programs. Even the rituals of Mass were different than when he’d last been inside a church. Lurking on the outside was as close as he could come. But other traditions had changed only slightly. He imagined the altar draped in white and purple as the priest led the celebration of the Nativity.

Peering down through a glass window of the belfry to see if he was right, he caught his own reflection. Thick black hair lay mussed from the bitter wind, and dark eyes glittered unnaturally like chips of obsidian. His full lips looked mischievous, belying his reserve.

Scruff perpetually darkened his cheeks. He’d been three days without shaving the night he was turned into the creature that stared back at him. Even if he bothered with a razor, the beard returned promptly. He’d heard often when he was alive that he was handsome. Still, symmetrical features and olive skin did not disguise that he was something other than human.

No, even if entering a church were not forbidden, he didn’t belong there anymore. No matter how much he missed it.

•••

Midnight Mass hadbeen Taviano’s favorite when he was a boy. It was the one night his parents allowed—and expected—him to be awake so late. Once he was old enough to serve as an altar boy, he shared in the faith that his family and community embraced. Calogero, his best friend, teased him about his excitement as the Feast of the Immaculate Conception neared. The feast kicked off the weeks of celebration that led to Christmas itself. Up would go the terra-cotta nativity scene in Taviano’s small house, and his mother’s baking would begin.

The Novena usually found Taviano in the streets with carolers on each of the eight nights prior to Christmas. Or sometimes he would follow the Zampognari. In their shepherd costumes, they played bagpipes before shrines and crèches. Finally, the night of nights would arrive. The stories, the magic of Christmas, and the good will in the air wove themselves into a tapestry of happiness.

In the center of that design, the essential core of Taviano’s life, was Calogero himself. A year apart in age, and inseparable since they were small children, Taviano and Calogero ran wild in the streets of Naples. As they grew from little boys to young men, Gero never felt the pull of the Church as Taviano did. Still, he was in the first pew on each Christmas Eve that Taviano assisted Father Francesco through Mass. His unruly brown hair and warm almond eyes crinkled at the corner when he smiled up at Taviano holding a massive Bible for the priest.

Calogero Aligheri was everything to him. But even when they fumbled through their first discoveries of each other’s bodies, Gero was the one to pull away. “You know this can’t go on after we meet girls and get married,” he’d whispered to Taviano. “We have to enjoy each other as much as we can but then move forward to our real lives.”

The words had broken Taviano’s heart though he’d respected their truth. Even if he’d never become a vampire, he couldn’t have shared a life with Calogero. Not in Naples in the 1840s. His family, long gone, had been uneasy about his excessive devotion to the Church and to Calogero. With his parents’ suspicions confirmed about the latter, they all but abandoned him to the former.

In the end, though, he’d never had to face the moment of giving up Gero for good as one of them embraced adulthood. His death came before he could take his final vows as a priest and before Calogero was to marry Carla Vitale.

Taviano retreated farther into shadow as the choir finished singing and sat in the nave below him. Eyes closed, he focused on the calm breaths of the priest taking his place at the pulpit to begin his homily. Of all the things and people he’d lost, the peace of the Mass and the love of his closest friend were what he missed most. He deserved neither, of course. Years of ceaseless wandering and feeding on the dregs of humanity, always from the darkness, had infected his soul.

After Bronislav put a bloodbeast inside and made Taviano into a vampire, he lectured that humans were cattle. His sire claimed that the bloodbeasts were demons put on Earth to thin the herd. He could still hear Bronislav’s hated, rasping voice.Drink for the pleasure of your demon, and the purer the blood the better. Do not try to enter a home uninvited. No sunlight, no silver, no holy sanctuaries. Conceal the evidence of every kill.

Taviano had resisted feeding until his demon’s gut-wrenching hunger drove him to take his first victim. He remembered sobbing as life faded from the woman Bronislav thrust at him.

He’d considered destroying himself then. Even if the bloodbeast permitted it, though, his Catholic instruction left him more afraid of suicide than of a demon. It had taken years to find a balance. He could satiate the creature sharing his body more easily than Bronislav claimed. Days would pass between feedings until its hunger for blood became overwhelming. Taviano didn’t need to drain a human either. A few pints sufficed to keep his demon tractable.

And as long as it fed, it had no opinion at all about the choice of victim. Taviano’s reluctance to take blood at random evolved into a strict, self-imposed code. For more than one hundred years, he had prowled back alleys and slums, looking for the worst specimens.

When he found a thug or a rapist or even a murderer, he followed to make sure of his crimes. And when he was sure, he stalked the villain, got him alone, and drank.

Sometimes he had to struggle with his demon to stop before the victim died. Sometimes he lost that struggle. If the person lived, Taviano borrowed strange power from his demon to reach into the mind and alter memories. He’d smear the marks left by his fangs with a drop of the thick, clear fluid that filled his veins in place of blood. Bronislav had called it “ichor” and it healed any wound, whether on Taviano or a victim.

Even with those mental chains he forged for himself, he never doubted that he was a monster. He spent his nights seeking the worst parts of a town, the worst of humanity. The bloodbeast never had to be hungry for long because there was so much vileness. He usually avoided people otherwise, in case his demon should succeed in taking control. He stayed in the shadows, as was right for the creature he’d become.

But increasingly he watched through lighted windows as lovers embraced, or haunted a church as he did that night. If he missed the simple joy of a Christmas Eve, well, who was to know?

•••

Taviano’s reverie brokeat the sudden prickle over his skin. He stiffened where he crouched, looking slowly around for the threat that alarmed his senses and riled his demon. He narrowed his eyes while the bloodbeast inside his body flexed and roared wordlessly in his mind.