Todd first saw them in an alleyway as he walked to the bus station from work. His job wasn't a night job but it was late when he left the office to catch the last bus of the night home.
    The man's face was sallow and thin, his eyes sunken and fevered. His hair was long and straggly, unwashed and tangled. In his arms was nestled a bundle of blue blankets. The blankets were the soft, wooly, sky-blue shade which children attach themselves to for security and comfort.
    From the folds of the blanket issued the brown-haired head of a small boy. His eyes were closed in unsteady sleep, the skin of his face was taut over the bones of his cheeks and forehead. The child looked like the dead.
    The man gently shifted the bundle that was the boy. As he did so Todd saw what, in the darkness of night, looked like needle tracks on the man's wrist and forearm. Todd slowed a moment to look at them, a rifling of thoughts and emotions running skippingly through his mind. A twinge of pity and guilt showed momentarily on his face before he quickened his step again. He had to be sure to catch the bus.
    The kids were long in bed by the time Todd had hiked the last three blocks home from the bus stop in the coolness of the night. That was good as he didn't wish to see the faces of the three year old and the four year old. For some reason Todd feared the guilt that would come with seeing their cherub faces.
    There was however, his wife Maggie to contend with. She was not pleased with his tardiness, even though he had called home earlier, telling her that he would be late. She had planned a big meal and it all went to waste.
    Well, weren't the kids hungry?
    Small kids have small stomachs.
    Sorrysorrysorry.
    Todd and Maggie's sleep was cold and frigid. No love making. He laid awake for hours into the dark heart of the night. In his mind he could see the man with the straggly hair carrying the bundle of his sleeping child as the walked the alleys and streets. From time to time Todd saw the face of his own young children in place of the man's son.
    It was only two nights later when Todd saw the two once again as he left his building and passed the alleyway, making for the bus stop and the last bus of the night. The man sat cross-legged in the alley. The child, wrapped in his bundle of blankets, sat in his father's lap, his head nestled against his father's breast.
    Todd felt the urge to go to them. To ask them if they needed money. Did they need food? A place to stay? There was always the basement in his own home with the extra bedroom where relation slept during visits. They could stay there until something could be arranged for them to get food stamps, welfare, etc.
    But even as Todd felt the itch to go to them and make these offers he felt something else as well which told him to leave off and let things be for now. It wasn't so much the tingling fear of approaching the poor and starving, of putting one's self in a position of being host to poverty, but something else.
    Other men's faces can be mirrors. Instead, Todd waited for his bus as the faces of his own children supplanted the face of the child held in the homeless man's arms. That night he slept cold again.
    The third time that he saw them he approached them. It was a hard thing for him to do. There were still the stigmas about association with the poor and unclean.
    But Todd's curiosity had been aroused and he could not continue to fight the inquiries which rose within him. The man, looking worse than ever, saw Todd approaching but did not move. The boy was again asleep in his father's arms, the blankets wrapping him into an obscure bundle.
    A thought came to Todd. He had never seen the child awake. Was it possible that the boy was dead and the man had been carrying his body about all this time? Todd buried the thought.
    "Are you all right?" Todd asked as he stood over the man. A stupid thing to say. Yet those were the only words that he could think of to say. The man looked up at Todd, his body shifting slightly. At this the boy awakened, his eyes snapping open. The color of his eyes was blue and a bright blue at that. Todd was taken aback for a moment. The child wasn't dead, far from it by the sharp awareness that those eyes showed.
    "No," the man said. He croaked out the single word. Todd, all his attention focused on the boy, had to blink and look at the man.
    "What?"
    "I am not well," the man sighed, a great strain coming through in his voice. "I have been weakened trying to feed my son."
    "C-could you use some money?" Todd stammered out. He started reaching for his billfold. He hadn't planned to give the man the last twenty dollars, plus bus fare, that he had; but the man and child obviously needed the money worse than Todd did.
    "Only for myself," the man said. "My child does not--take food like you or I."
    "What do you mean? Does he had a special diet or diabetes or something?"
    "You could say that," the man said, his eyelids drooped and then so did his head as grief and resignation overtook him. Todd stood still, his hand clutching his leather wallet. Then the man looked up again. "Timothy only takes blood."
    Todd felt quick indignation rise in him. "That's a sick joke," he said through gritted teeth. His hand tightened around the wallet. The boy, Timothy, raised his face in the arc sodium lamp light that streamed into the alley. He parted his lips and showed Todd the truth. The teeth were surprisingly clean. Bright even in the darkness of night. The canines were the brightest, and the longest.
    "Sweet Jesus Christ," Todd breathed as the energy left his body. A sinking feeling came over him. Here before him was myth brought to life. Vampires and Dracula and the creatures of the night. To suddenly have the stories made real brought a dizzying vertigo to him. Yet Todd did not move; did not turn to run. He was not afraid. Startled, surely, but not afraid of what he saw.
    "Are you--?" Todd asked the man. The words trailed off, he could not finish the sentence. The man shook his head in the negative.
    "No, I am not a vampire. I am merely his father."
    "But how did he get like that?" Todd asked.
    "Through misbegotten chance," the man said. "I bedded his mother not knowing what she really was. I would not have thought she could have had a child, but I was wrong. It was on a night of the sanguine moon and that does strange things to the dead, especially women vampires. That is how Timothy came into this world."
    "Where is she?" Todd asked. Visions of stakes through the heart came to mind. Was the boy's mother destroyed?
    "She did not want him and gave him to me to do with as I would. And I have vowed to raise him. Even though he does not belong in this world."
    "There's room for everyone in the world," Todd said in a low voice, surprised by what he said. Vampires were supposed to be evil blood-suckers preying on virgins. They weren't supposed to be children born with an irrevocable affliction.
    "Is there?" the man asked, raising a querying eyebrow. "He is what is called vampyle, half human and half vampire. No human society would accept him. The vampire society, if such a thing exists, would brand him a half-breed and kill him outright. We have, as one might say, fallen through the cracks."
    "How do you support yourself and him?"
    "I cannot anymore. I am drained. I have very little blood left to give him and hunger is weakening him. We will not 'hunt.' It is not our way. No one will die because of us."
    "That's what those tracks on your arm are from, right?" Todd asked, pointing to the man's right arm. The man lifted his arm into the light and looked at it morosely. He nodded at the puncture marks.
    "This way I only look like a druggy. Not like a feeding station."
    "H-how much does he need?" Todd asked. There was a sudden flash of hope in the eyes of both the man and the boy. There was also hesitation.
    "He is young," the man said, his voice sinking low, but it was clear and distinct. "He does not require much. It would not--harm you."
    Todd nodded and sat down next to the man. He stripped off his jacket and rolled up the sleeves of his shirt. Thoughts of his children did not come to mind. Nor did thoughts of Maggie. She would see the marks and wonder about them. But Todd would deal with it in due time. For now there was simply an empty stomach to fill.
    Before he forgot, Todd extracted the twenty dollars from his billfold and handed it to the man. The man took the money and crumpled the bills into his palm, holding on to them tightly. Todd held open his arms and Timothy crawled from his father's lap into Todd's. The boy's father handed the blankets to Todd and Todd draped the boy in them again.
    "I must eat as well," the man said. "I will be back shortly. After Timothy is finished, wrap him in the blankets, head to toe." Todd nodded. He could feel a coolness coming from Timothy. It was like the coolness of a gravestone on a summer night. The coolness was the breath of the earth rising into the stone and washing out the heat of the sun.
    The boy was gaunt, Todd could feel the boy's pelvic bones digging into his thighs and he could feel the jutting ribs when he held the boy in his left arm and extended his right arm. The child didn't look at him as he grasped Todd's arm with his own hands. Hands that were surprisingly strong.
    Then Todd felt the twin jabs of needle-sharp teeth descend into the veins of his wrist. There was an excited heat that coursed up his arm for a moment. Then his bare skin became chill. He could feel Timothy sucking the blood out of him. Already the boy was looking healthier as color came to his cheeks and lips. Though undead in a way, Timothy was also alive and struggled to live just as any person would. He would be strong one day. And, Todd felt, he would be a good person as well.
    Timothy stopped his meal and extracted his teeth. There were puckered marks on Todd's arm but only a single trickle of blood ran from both wounds. There was no excessive bleeding. Timothy lay into Todd, his head resting on Todd's chest. Todd wrapped the blue blankets around the boy and held him.
    The darkness was warm and humid and the bundle slightly cold. A silver moon rose above them in the sky. Despite the strange truths that had come been revealed to him this night and the blood that he had lost, he felt better than he had in a long, long time.
 

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