After Bramble was gone, I stayed outside by the road, looking at all the branches that still needed to be taken deeper into the forest. Out of sight, out of mind.

Darkness was descending and the temperature was dropping. The clouds were breaking above, revealing a magnificent crescent close to the treetops. I was standing in the clearing between trees where Rose's garden cut into the woody landscape. Plume was still perched on my shoulder. I felt his claws wrapping themselves around my shirt. Stump's presence seemed to be inspecting the cut branches.

Trees whispered in the wind, gossiping of the day that had passed near this lone house in the woods. And I had never felt more alone in my life. Or whatever it was I had.

It was surprisingly disconcerting observing Plume the raven. Just today he had torn apart a field mouse. Once he had recovered from his stupor, he had been feeding, leaving behind a trail of small rodents, and even some not so small. I had dug a pit at the garden's edge. Because the raven was a sloppy eater. Once the blood started collecting swarms of flies, Plume wouldn't touch it anymore.

And I looked at every squirrel I buried with memories that suddenly felt crisp and clear. I–the vampire me–had enjoyed a little game of linking animals. Just because I could bind a rabbit to my will, I had done it.

Plume took off, rising and landing on a pine top where he then stood, framed by the light from the equally rising crescent.

I had been willing to override two wills, bind two lives under my dominion.

And it hadn't been some years ago. It had been just last Monday.

I drew in a deep breath of the mountain air. I had tried to rid myself of the vampire Court coming here where no demi-god of death could survive. And I might be rid of the Court, and its Queen, to an extent. I had just forgotten one vampire I couldn't run away from. And that one wasn't currently clinging on a pine branch like an odd cone.

There was one in my memories, hidden in my manners, closer to the surface than I had ever realized. In the bar, I hadn't become a normal Timothy the-non-magical. Because I could no longer imagine myself a normal current human being. The one other path I could imagine was the vampiric one.

I cast my gaze to the thicket where I sensed Stump hovering. My phantasm. My first sacrifice. He had died a human. The Queen had offered to turn him, and Stump had declined. But he had lived with the real vampires. And when his well being truly collapsed and he had been bedridden of old age, he had called me.

He had said all the goodbyes he had needed and he had known he would rise no more. It had been his time.

Any one of us could have linked him and within months he could have become young and healthy. Or with the modern healthcare system he could have been kept alive for years maybe.

But Stump had understood it was his place to go, and my place to start a life as a vampire.

And even now, standing in the dark garden where cold shadows crept and only stars saw me reminiscing, I couldn't really bring myself to feel guilty. I had drunk the life force of a man, snuffed out his candle and moved on without a second thought.

Technically, by some logic, surely I had murdered him.

I tilted my head in thought. And searched for an ink shape in the shadows. Plume took lives every year. By my counting he had been leaching off humanity for some thirty years. The victims were always close to the end, either physically or mentally. It was something a vampire sensed, something that drew them in. Still it would have been ethical to argue against their outright execution.

Would have been.

I almost missed Plume. The Vampire Plume. He was the only person who had ever known all of my secrets. Most were secrets I hadn't wanted to share, and some had been secrets I hadn't known I carried. And Plume had maybe been the last person, living or dead, I would have wanted to confide in.

It wasn't that I really even missed him yet. I was just worried I wouldn't have him back for some time, that I would miss him in the near future.

I sighed. And then looked around me. Spiritual flow moved in lazy smoky curls around me. Them I saw perfectly well, even if Stump for me was only a shadow I picked in my sixth sense. Rose was still up in the house and there probably was no one else within at least a full five hundred meters, where Rose had her nearest neighbor.

I made no conscious choice when I suddenly bent over on the road and took my rubber boots off. I planted two bare feet into the grass that grew between the two dirt channels that were kept bare by car wheels. If a part of me was to be vampiric, I was maybe entitled to choose also aspects I liked. Especially now that my favorite nephew was playing a bird.

I sensed Stump coming closer, when I drew in a deep inhale. Then, on exhale, I closed my hands.

I had been a vampire strongly affected by what the witches called the vampire madness. It was a deeply felt connection to the spirits that made the vampire act often quite bizarrely.

The spirits sensed I was concentrating on them, the flow of smoky tendrils of light swirled enthusiastically around me. Like playful, yet lazy, dolphins.

Then we danced.

There was a rhythm to how the spirits around me moved. And when I made a conscious effort to perceive it, moving to it was maybe the most natural thing I had done for months.

There was also the moon. And it too had a rhythm.

The wind had a rhythm in the spirit flow.

The stars had a rhythm.

When I had been a true vampire, I had been able to become a shadow, become part of the spiritual flow, just one more smoky tendril among the currents.

When I had thought I was a human, I hadn't really sensed them clearly enough to try and up until this moment a part of me had tried to simply ignore the whole lightshow.

Now, as I danced to the wind and the moon, sometimes slow, and sometimes fast, I didn't feel quite like a vampire. A vampire didn't have breath, didn't have a beating heart. That had been a dance of completely becoming part of the spirits.

But I danced to the moon, to the spirits and to my lungs. My feet hit the small stones. I caught on a nettle leaf, blood pumped to my ears, and I knew I was laughing. I had never known how to dance. And there was no pattern. It just was. Like the moon was, the wind was, and my beating heart was.

Before long, I also knew I wasn't alone.

A shadow joined my dancing. It wasn't mirroring my gestures, but it danced to the same tune. It knew the spirits. It knew the moon.

And before long I became hypnotized by the movement. I couldn't match it, it was faster and slower than I was.

And a thousand times more elegant, like it had been practicing a thousand years for just this choreography.

I stopped, and sat on the road, looking at the elf who danced in the moonlight. It was the androgynous, naked one I had met on my first night. But it was no more deeply green. They were silvery, like the moon. Their hair was long and floated, then turned, on its own but perfectly in sync with the spirits.

They came to a halt in a smooth ending to the dance. And with the elf seemed to halt a dozen of smokey tendrils, like an afterimage. Waves passing in the wake of a ship. As if the spirits had been slightly surprised by the stopping movement.

"You are odd," they announced once they came to a stop. It seemed absolutely impossible that the light breeze could lift their long silver hair like that. Yet it seemed absolutely natural.

When I stayed quiet, they continued:

"You can be with the spirits."

It wasn't a question, so I stayed quiet. This night they didn't seem threatening. And I was still far too embarrassed from getting caught in my nocturnal dance practice.

"But where are your roots? You've started growing some since last I saw you, but where are the old ones, the strong ones? There are only two. What did you do to the others?"

"My roots?" I asked.

"Your roots! Are you not lonely? You make me frightened. And sad. Are you sad?"

Mad. They were mad, like I had been mad as a vampire. This elf was like I had been and the dance had drawn us together. In some way that made sense to my mad vampiric brain. Even as I knew that all logic would dissipate if I tried analyzing that thought with my human brain. So I didn't, and only answered the question.

"Yes. I am sad. My nephew is a bird, but I would want him to be a man."

That was an answer straight from Timothy the vampire. It only made sense for this most bizarre conversation near Rose's moonlit garden.

"You love your vampire?"

Plume chose that moment to swoosh down and perch on my shoulder. The elf stared at the bird.

"Yes! And the vampire loves you! The connection is strong, old. It's good."

They turned to talk to me again.

"Don't be sad. He will be a vampire again. They live long and will remember who they were. Come. I will help you pass the time."

They extended a hand to me. It had long nails, not unlike Plume's talons.

"Help me pass the time?"

"It cannot be explained. I will show it to you."

I was just about to reach for the hand, when the headlight of a very noisy motorcycle suddenly burst through the woods.

Nettle very nearly rode over me.