I always liked it when full moon fell on a Friday night, because then I got to stay up with Dad and Nat and watch over Mom as she changed. When in human form she forbade me to go within ten feet of her cage during that lunar phase, but that was before we found out that I had inherited the voluntary part of shape shifting. Once I had figured out how to control the changes, which were not tied to the moon in any way, I could talk to Mom as wolf-to-wolf and try to calm her. My wolf side and my disposition I got from Mom. From Dad I got a passion for literature, neatness, and extremely rare steak with lots of holes poked in it.

For the two men of the house were vampires. Uncle Nat Silver wasn’t really any relation of ours – he was our family friend, tenant, and general practitioner/veterinarian. Only in the Anghel family did we need to be treated for both. He also had degrees in psychiatry and obstetrics, under the excellent rationale that since he was going to live for centuries, he could go back to medical school as many times as he could afford it. He returned every twenty-five years or so, and since he had been bitten when he was twenty-nine, he blended in as well as a deathly pale, short, scrawny fellow with crimson irises and a light aversion could manage. Who wore pink clothes and spiked his bright orange hair, I might add.

That particular night we were all sitting on cushions in the utility room of the basement. I came down the stairs with three mugs balanced on a plastic tray, humming “Werewolves of London”. Dad was typing up on his latest manuscript, a historical fiction about the Vietnam War. He had great energy now that he had just signed a contract with his first agent in ten years. He was the stereotypical, tortured-soul type of honest vampire, dark-haired, taking to brooding in the shadows and sipping pig blood from delicate champagne flutes. Unfortunately we couldn’t afford a gloomy mansion, sinister servants, and tuxedos, so he had to settle for brown corduroy pants, a dark green turtleneck, and the ever-present sunglasses, all in a modest townhouse in the suburbs of Laconia.

“Thank you, Dianne,” Dad murmured, taking a mug from me. “This is pig, right?”

“Right. Pig blood for you, cow blood for Nat, cocoa blood for me. I suppose it is the blood of the cocoa bean, isn’t it? How do you determine blood preferences, anyway?” I was wearing my favorite t-shirt, which showed the first thousand digits of pi. Underneath that I had pajama pants printed with moons and stars.

Nat was playing a miniature version of the Labyrinth game, where you twist the knobs to make the little metal ball roll around the path without falling into the holes. “Darn it! My score is seventy-three again. Oh, food? Goody. Thanks, sweetie.” He balanced the game on his sprawled legs and took the drink in both hands. After a sip he screwed up his face. “Ugh. No contest. Human blood is the queen of flavors, the ultimate rush. It’s like how I think I remember chocolate used to be like for me. But if you couldn’t have the food of the gods, would you rather have a juicy steak, a pork loin, or a chicken drumstick?”

“Point taken.” I was going to say more, but Mom cut me off with a snarl and a crash of chains against the steel bars.

“Di, can you find out what she wants?” Dad asked.

“Sure can do.” I concentrated on my memories of a man in the subway who’d “accidentally” groped me while I was getting in the train. I had wanted to growl at him in a way that would show him he wasn’t molesting some ordinary teenage girl. I wanted to roar, to howl, and to call the authorities upon him. The offense and my injury swelled up in my throat, a build up of anger, anger, anger, until…”CRRWAHRRRRRRRR.” In English, “I am the dominant one here. You are subordinate to me. Remember this.” Only my vocal chords had changed. The rest of me was one hundred percent human.

She indicated that she wanted freedom. I said that she would have to wait till the sun rose. Did she want food? She wanted food. Mom and I went deer hunting on four feet during the season, and we had the chunks ready in plastic bags. I preferred feeding Mom myself, but I knew that human-Mom's wrath for such an act would be more terrible than any number of werewolf bites, so I handed the Ziploc bag of venison to Dad. "Could you give these to Mom, please?"

Dad began to hum softly, taking the pack from me and walking across the room. His humming grew louder, and I recognized it as the first movement of "Venus: The Bringer of Peace" from "The Planets" suite by Gustav Holst. Mom growled and tensed against her chains, but it soon turned to a soft whine, and she lay down and laid her shaggy head on her paws. "There's my girl," Dad murmured. "Don't worry. Soon it will be morning, and you'll be our Selene again." He emptied the bag into a plastic dog dish, and risked reach between the cage bars to pat Mom on the head.

Nat hugged himself and sighed, "Aww. Dianne, your parents are the most adorable kids I've ever seen."

"We're not kids, Nat," Dad said, a little irritated. He liked Nat's company but often remarked upon Nat's similarity to a gnat: both small, bloodsucking, and annoying.

"Hello? Ferdinand, you're sixty years my junior. You should respect me more, especially since I'm a war hero."

"Here we go again." I adopted a childlike lisp. "What warth were you in, Unky Nat?"

"It's funny you should ask that," he said, standing up and taking a bow. "For I...fought...in...the..."

All three of us said, "VIETNAM WAR."

"We've been over this," said Dad. "You were a stowaway and a parasite."

Nat twirled around the standing lamp, then swung on the pipes on the ceiling, and came down with a flourish. "For the enemy. And I also...and I did...well...it's a long story..." He clasped his hands in front of him and wavered one foot like a nervous little girl about to give a class presentation.

I loved it when Nat told stories, for he was unashamedly absorbed in his enthusiam to an extent that would embarrass anyone else. He'd sway back and forth, tapdance, walk around the room, and use any nearby objects as visual aids. When describing how he had been bitten, he had forever changed the way I thought about rolling pins and spatulas. In my eyes kitchen appliances had a sinister, occult tinge.

"U.S. involvement in Vietnam was pointless and sent thousands of young men to their death and ruined much of Vietnamese life," Dad moralized. "Besides, war is terrible and scarring and much worse than weeks of having garlic shoved under your nose."

Nat put his arms around Dad's shoulders. "Oh yes, but for us...blood is beautiful, isn't it? Sweet and tangy and intoxicating. Besides, I was young, I'd only been a vampire for just over a year, and those were my glory days. You're a family man, and you love your human parents and sister and brother in law and (mostly) human daughter and wife. I was officially dead, totally cut off and friendless, and war is the perfect excuse for a vampire with a conscience to do what he does best. So gather round, children," he patted Dad on the head and laughed wildly, spinning around the room, "and I will tell you a story of youth and moonlight, of rice paddies and guerrilla warfare, and how I straddled the line between hero and villain: the story of the vampire veteran."

Nat sat down again on the cushions, in the lotus position. He put his hands in the meditation pose, took his sunglasses, and closed his eyes. His next words were slow and calm, punctuated by the occasional giggle and the toothiest grin known to bipedal creatures. This was the story he told…

It was the spring of 1965 when Nat snuck aboard a ship carrying soldiers to Hanoi. He had just achieved his first medical degree and was a qualified veterinarian, and simply decided one day that he would devote his unlife to his country. No false patriotism motivated him – simply the thought that this was the perfect opportunity to indulge the cravings for violence that a good vampire had to suppress at all times. There was no need to notify anyone of his decision, for his family thought he was dead and he thought they’d prefer that to the truth. As for friends, no matter how conscientious and peaceable he might be, nobody saw past the fangs.

Thank goodness that a legally nonexistent man had no chance of being drafted. His little masquerade, using sunglasses, several bottles’ worth of sunscreen, and never smiling with his mouth open, passed muster in class, but would fall apart under close scrutiny. Even his landlord had been giving him strange looks lately, which was another excellent reason to hop it.

The actual smuggling part was a little tricky. The Marines were boarding very early in the morning, when it was still dark, so Nat changed into a bat and fluttered into someone’s fortunately open suitcase. It was a tight squeeze, but vampire bats are about the size of hamsters when they fold up their wings, so he could breathe all right. Vampires liked closed spaces.

“Hey,” an infantryman said to the owner of the suitcase, “your zipper’s open.”

The soldier felt around his pants. “Thanks, buddy. It would have been embarrassing if the sergeant saw.”

“I mean your duffel bag, you dope!”

“Oh.” He closed it, not noticing the slight bulge at the top, or the faint squeak that Nat gave, just barely within the range of human hearing. The zipper had caught on Nat’s fur. He spent an unknown amount of time dozing, nestled in the folds of the soldier’s uniform.

Once he didn’t smell any humans around him and concluded that he was in the cargo hold, there was the problem of trying to get out. If he changed into his larger shape he might burst the bag, which might look suspicious and wasn’t very nice, anyway. Ruining someone’s luggage like that could hurt his feelings. As a bat, though, he didn’t have the opposable thumbs to free himself. He somehow managed to catch the zipper with his teeth after an hour of searching and pull it down far enough so that he could slide out.

Transformed, he surveyed his surroundings. Nat had nothing but his sunglasses, the tourist clothes on his back, a watch on his wrist, a hundred dollars in his wallet, and a miniature Vietnamese phrasebook in his pocket. It was dark, but his night vision could clearly see the outlines of the suitcases, machinery, and artillery. He arranged the baggage around him to make a crude couch, leaned back, and began to study Vietnamese pleasantries. He hadn’t brought any food with him, but he knew he could go without sucking anything down for at least a month as long as he didn’t smell any fresh blood. That could lead to frenzies.

When studying paled, he sang all the Broadway songs that he had ever heard, starting with “The Sound of Music”. He knew the entire scores for about a dozen musicals. He also explored the cargo hold thoroughly, and played with the unloaded guns to the delight of his inner child. He didn’t get seasick at all.

When things were a little lonely, he crept out of the cargo hold at two AM, when it was likely that everyone would be asleep. He strolled past the rows of bunks with his hands spread out, lightly touching each soldier. They were all his age or slightly older. He realized that being drafted isn’t that different from becoming a vampire: someone grabs the rookie against his will, and then he’s given new fighting skills and expected to kill people.

On his solitary walks Nat would sometimes, if someone in particular caught his eye, stroke his neck with a sort of hungry fondness. He knew never to harm anyone on this ship, for then both his conscience and the entire army would be out to get him, and he’d never survive. Besides, he had been human not too long ago, and he had enjoyed that and didn’t want anyone else to lose the privilege. Only once did this practice wake someone up.

The young man jerked up, nearly hitting his head on the bunk above him. “Ahh!”

Nat put a hand on his mouth. “Ssh. Please. I’m just a dream, nothing to make a fuss about.”

“How do I know that you’re a dream?”

Nat sat down on the floor and ticked off the reasons on his fingers. “One, as you see, I am not in uniform, so I am obviously not a soldier. Two, if I am not a soldier I would have to be a stowaway. Three, no man in his right mind would actually go to great lengths to sneak aboard a boat heading for war, instead of enlisting. Four, look at my eyes.”

“It’s too dark…what are those weird red lights?”

“Those are my eyes. Real things do not have my eyes.” Nat chuckled at his own cleverness. “So I am not real. So you are dreaming. QED.”

“What’s QED?”

“Thus it is proven. Lie down now and go to sleep. Your girlfriend sends her love.”

“How do you know?”

“I just do.” Actually, it was a wild guess on Nat’s part, but it seemed to pacify the Marine he had awoken, so he lay back down and was soon snoring.

Nat did not count the days until they arrived at the port, but it was a few weeks at least. He was fortunate that the sun was just barely rising when he disembarked and stealthily flew away into the night. The sticky heat made him immediately shed his shirt, and the air was thick with mosquitoes. His first drink of blood in Asia was when he was in bat form, and it was rather difficult to pierce the thick skin of a water buffalo. However, Nat had no intention of harming civilians or his own countrymen. He didn’t think Communism was wrong, he just thought that it was stupid and likely to mess Vietnam up for good. He headed north for a week, sometimes flying, sometimes walking through the jungles and plantations. He slept in bat caves and learned from the bats where the loudest noises and brightest lights were, which he interpreted as meaning battles. Nat didn’t want to get in the thick of a battle, so this was useful to avoid. What he needed was a North Vietnamese camp.

He found finally found one, heavy with the smell of wounds, gunpowder, and sweat. The makeshift tents stretched into the distance, sheltered in a little valley. Nat’s efforts to enter the camp were thwarted by an invisible barrier. He banged his head against it a few times before giving up, but before he turned away he noticed a sentry and was struck by inspiration.

“Evening good!” Nat greeted him cheerfully in what he knew to be abysmal Vietnamese grammar.

The sentry looked around for a while before he could see Nat, then he aimed his gun in the vampire’s direction. “What are you doing here? If you come nearer, I will shoot!”

“If happy that makes you,” Nat said, advancing. “I just want to talk. As you see, I am unarmed.”

“You are either lying or very foolish. AHHmmph.” The man had tried to shout when Nat tackled him, but Nat’s strong hand clamped over his mouth before much came out. They struggled on the grass for a while, until Nat managed to get a hand on his ankle and let him scrabble towards the camp so that all but his foot was within the barrier.

Even with one hand, Nat’s crushing powers were great. “Say ‘you may come in’.”

“Ahh…ahh…” the man gasped weakly. Blood was seeping out, and Nat licked it up.

“It’s not that hard. Repeat after me. You…”

“You…ahh…aiya…”

“May…”

“May…please, please. If you want to kill me, do it quickly.”

“Come in. Come on now, I don’t have all night.”

“Come in now! You may come in now!”

Nat let go and patted the stricken soldier on the head. “Thank you. In exchange, I will spare your life. You might want to see a doctor about that foot – it doesn’t look good.”

It was hard for Nat to restrain himself from salivating as he tiptoed among the rows of sleeping men, most shirtless for the steamy environment. Now whom to pick, whom to pick…taking an officer would do Nat’s native land the biggest favor. He located a separate tent with a nice cot and a uniform with stars and bars hanging on the chair. Vampires always prefer biting attractive people, just as humans like food that’s presented with some artistry. This one would do.

Nat grew almost sentimental as he recalled this meal, along with the hundreds that he had afterwards over the next few months. Sometimes he polished off as many as four North Vietnamese soldiers in a single night. They would wake up and struggle to get a precious drink from him in their last minutes of life, in order to return from the brink and become as he was, but he pushed them down. The nights smelled of blood and jasmine, thick with the harsh beauty of ugliness. Or was it the harsh ugliness of beauty? Tooth to skin and tongue’s caress – yes, he remembered. It was, in a way, kinder than shooting at them and ripping through their heart like a savage. This was a kiss, a kinship, and something that made use of their death instead of throwing the body aside as garbage.

“Nat, stop it,” Dad said firmly. “You’re going to make me go berserk.”

“Okay, okay, I’ll tone down the yummy sensuality of it all…”

“STOP!” Dad clapped his hands over his ears. “Not listening! Not listening!” He started to shiver.

I sighed deeply and bared my forearm. “You can have one shot glass worth, and that is all.”

Nat stroked my hair. “Sorry, Anghels, especially you, Dianne. You’re such a trouper. The memories are all I have.”

Dad nodded. “I think I’ll leave. Thank you, dear, but I won’t ask that of you.” He gathered up his things and went upstairs.

“Should I stop?” Nat asked. “You probably are tired of hearing the supernatural equivalent of heroin addicts drone on and on.”

I shook my head. “I like the story. One question – was it so enjoyable because you were biting necks, or because you were biting men’s necks?”

“I refuse to answer that on the grounds that your very conservative and handsome father would throw me out of the house if I said yes, and if I said no I would be implying that there would be something wrong about feeling that way. There is no good reply.” Nat stood up and began to pace. “If I may continue, then…”

“Oh, of course.”

Obviously eating didn’t take Nat all night, so he spent the rest of the time wandering around the jungle and the terraced farmlands. Mosquitoes don’t bite vampires – their blood is too highly processed and congeals too fast to give anything a satisfying dinner. Thus only the heat was an issue, and once he got used to it, the humidity was not so bad. Once he made a bouquet of orchids and gave them to the Mekong, flinging each flower one by one into the chocolate current. The stars shone bright and he tried to teach himself the constellations, even though explosions in the distance blocked them out for minutes at a time. His Vietnamese comprehension was excellent but his speech remained terrible, as he never got to practice and hardly spoke to a soul.

Until…Nat wandered further away from the military camp than usual. He did not know how many miles away, but it was where ordinary folk still lived in tumbledown shacks surrounded by rice paddies. He was admiring its simplicity and the poetry that lies in squalor, particularly for a creature of the night, and then someone threw a knife into his chest.

He fell backwards onto the ground, and a woman who had been hiding in the bushes came up to him and spit on the wound she had given him. “Death to American soldiers ruining our country!” she snarled. She was young, in her teens even, with a tattered tube of cloth under her armpits and down to her knees as the only clothing she had. Her face was dirty and her hair could have had mice nesting in it, for all Nat knew.

Nat slowly took the knife out of his body, gritting his teeth as he did so. “Ow.” Her eyes widened and she tried to run away, but Nat was in front of her within ten seconds. He grabbed her wrist. “Your knife is here, madam,” he said.

She was crying. “I did not know…are you a ghost? Do not kill me…”

“I do not kill anyone who has not signed up for it.”

“What about my husband? He did not ask to die! The government forced him, and I’m all alone, with no child to comfort me.” She crumpled to the ground, one arm raised in Nat’s grip.

“Madam, madam…I understand why you would feel such hate. I am trying only to live. And if I was the one who killed your husband, I promise you he felt little pain. Madam, please. I did not mean for this to hurt you.”

“Ghost! Ghost! Evil spirit! Leave me!”

“Is there anything I can do?”

“Leave! Please leave! All of you leave! Just, oh...go away…leave me, as all others have! My husband, my brothers, my father…gone!”

Nat left her there, the bloody knife by her side as she watered the ground with her tears. The next time he entered the camp he hesitated, crouching beside the soldier’s bunk. This wasn’t food any more. It could be that woman’s husband. It could be her brother. He felt no malice towards her, for if he had suspected anyone of having killed a member of his family, he would have done the same. Each of these men had histories. They didn’t believe in evil. They were just ordinary people, like he had once been. They fought and he bit, but did they have to? As he was thinking, something hit him on the head, and he was gone.

Light, light, everywhere he could see light, even though his eyes were closed. The familiar feather touch of sunglasses on his nose and ears was gone, and the light seared his senses. He could feel his skin audibly sizzling in the tropical sun, and he already had a monster headache. “I’ll tell you anything!” he shouted, writhing. He could feel that he was tied to a chair. “I can’t see, I can’t feel, I can’t think, just turn the light down!”

Relief! There was still too much light, but someone had obviously drawn a curtain. Nat risked opening one eye. There was a sweat-soaked, scowling face about two inches away from his nose, and Nat immediately closed his eye again.

“So it’s true. There is a strange, demon creature,” said a voice as near as the face, speaking accented English. Nat could smell that he had just been eating beef noodles with…shallots? Maybe.

“I object to being called a demon,” Nat said.

The man slapped him. “Open your eyes! If you are not a demon, then what are you?”

“I’m me.”

He laughed. “Oh, so that explains all, does it? Are you the one who has been slaughtering men in their sleep?”

“Yes, sir.” Now he could see that they were in a cement structure, with someone at a desk typing on a typewriter.

“And you are American.”

“Sort of.”

Another slap. “What do you mean, ‘sort of’? You look like a man, but you scream at the sun, and you leave punctures in necks but no other marks in the men you murder. A woman said she stabbed someone and he did not die. Was that you? Are you a weapon? Are there more of you?”

“Around the world? Yes. I haven’t met any, though. The government thinks I’m dead, and the army knows nothing about me. I’m a free agent.”

The man leaned back. “Is that so? Perhaps you like an employer?”

“Huh?”

“You work for the Communist Party, or we kill you. You could be valuable as tool, but you have no use as hostage if they think you are dead already.”

Nat gulped. “Can I have some time to think about it?” No, no, no! His brother was in the U.S Army. And he wasn’t even sure if he wanted to kill anyone any more. Again, a total lack of patriotism existed in this vampire’s motives.

“Fine then. Until sundown, you may think.”

He was put in a cell with two other POWs. One, blond, tall, and smacking of eagles and apple pie (which would be a very messy combination) was holding the other in his arms. The one lying down was almost as thin and pale as Nat, and his leg was nearly severed from his body. He was moaning weakly, and the puddle of tears was almost equal to the puddle of blood on the cement floor. “Shrapnel,” the blond one muttered as Nat came in.

Nat felt pity, disgust, and hunger all at the same time, which he found somewhat perturbing. “Um…what’s his name?”

“Richard Yancey. I’m Private Larry Mears.”

“Dr. Nathan Silver…” Blood blood blood blood BLOOD. Nat was appalled at himself.

“You’re a doctor? Can you help him? Please. He’s barely eighteen.”

“I’m only a veterinarian, and I don’t have any equipment. Can I talk to him?”

“I don’t know. He comes in and out. Richie? Can you hear us?”

Richard whispered, “Yeah.”

Nat squatted down beside the stricken young man – a boy really – and said, “I don’t think you’re going to make it.”

Richard shook his head. “I don’t think so. Mary…”

“She’ll be safe,” Nat promised. At least she’d be safe from him. “I bet it hurts.”

“You have no idea.”

“Do you want me to make it go faster?”

Private Mears looked confused. “You don’t have any weapons.”

Nat sighed. “I’m afraid that I do.” He bared his teeth and Private Mears shrank away from him.

Richard thought for a moment, and then nodded. “Just make it stop hurting.”

“I promise it will stop hurting.” Nat raised the boy’s head up and bit into his jugular.

Private Mears let go of Richard and backed away to the opposite edge of the cell. “You’re a vampire! You, you monster! You FREAK!”

Nat felt a lump rise in his throat, and he wasn’t sure which of the many possible reasons was the cause. Richard sighed one last, deep sigh, and smiled. Then he was gone. Nat stood up. “Don’t judge by appearances,” he said.

“U.S INFANTRY!” a voice yelled. Nat turned and saw a whole platoon of infantrymen who had smashed their way into the cell, and therefore the entire camp. He realized that he still had smears of blood on his mouth.

“Crap,” Nat said quietly.

“And then what happened?” I asked, for Nat had lapsed into silence.

“What? Oh. Private Mears told them that I was a monster, and they beat me up rather thoroughly. I still have knife marks. Fortunately they didn’t get around to trying to kill me until it was nearly sundown, and I managed to morph and fly away. It seemed best not to stay in Vietnam after that, so I slowly made my way to Thailand, then onward through Myanmar, and eventually to Bombay, India. It’s now Mumbai, you know.”

“Yes, I know. So you snagged a ride back to the U.S?”

“Yes. Set up a clandestine veterinary practice for people without licenses or proper records until I made enough money to go back to medical school. It’s high time you should go to bed, sweetie. You’ve got your track meet tomorrow.”

“Can you tell me more?”

“Some other night.” His usual bubble and spark had faded, and he sat staring at his hands as if they didn’t belong to them.

I gave him a goodnight hug. “Do you regret what you did?”

“I don’t know. Do you think I’m a cold blooded killer?”

“No more than anyone else in the war. So I don’t know either. Goodnight.”

“Goodnight.”

“Rarrhgh,” I said to Mom, who was curled up and asleep after her meal. I went to bed and dreamed of jungles. Nat stayed up and thought of war.