I don't often think about my own death. After all, it's nearly impossible to kill me. I don't age, I don't even need to breathe. I held up my hand before me, the pale material I called skin mocking me. Skin? Really? This crystalline bullshit? Skin was supposed to be soft and warm, it was supposed to have soft and warm colors, like tan or brown or creamy pink. I glanced at my neighbor. He had vitiligo, so his skin was even more colorful than most.

I was in the window seat on a tiny plane headed to a small airport in the little town of Forks, Washington. It could seat thirty passengers, but only had seventeen, including me. I wondered what the poor fellow whose ticket I'd stolen was doing right now. He'd been the only Asian in Seattle airport going to Forks. He probably had family he was excited to see tonight, and I'd ruined their reunion.

That's because I am a parasite, a bloodsucker who can only exist by taking from everyone around me, like a tick or a mosquito. My fellow parasites prefer aggrandizing terms like 'apex predator' or 'ultimate lifeform,' on account of the impregnable 'skin' and incredible strength. They prey upon humans, taking sadistic pleasure in their hunts and absolute dominance.

I have exactly two points of moral superiority over my fellow parasites. First, I have never partaken of even a single drop of human blood. I live off the blood of animals, and then only when I must to slake my thirst and curb the blood-madness. Second, I have sworn an oath to purge this planet of all vampires. Still looking at my hand, I flexed my fingers and watched the muscles of my forearms bulge and contort. I let myself bask for a moment in the pleasure of Stefan's demise, in the satisfaction of burning his and Vladimir's corpses in a steel barrel. I'd been joined by several homeless men and women who came to warm themselves in the night, thinking it was a normal barrel fire and oblivious to the delicious irony.

But a creature that can only subsist through cruelty does not deserve to live. I am no exception. My existence remains inherently cruel, though I destroy other parasites and do not kill humans. My mission leaves no time for legitimate enterprise, so I have no money of my own. I entered the United States illegally, wearing clothes I'd stolen from a UNIQLO in Japan, presenting tickets I'd taken from pockets along the way. Even doing all I can to exist without harm, my passing hurts those around me.

I know that one day I must die as the final parasite to remove from this Earth. I don't know when that will be, probably centuries in the future. But I want to believe the harm I cause will eventually be redeemed by the evil I remove. In that moment, when the penultimate vampire perishes by my hand, I will breathe a final sigh of relief and go to my own grave.

I haven't decided how I'll die. Maybe I'll jump into a volcano; the magma should be enough to end me. I'm sure it will be immensely painful, but it will be the final act to balance everything out.

This is why I don't think about my death often. It's depressing as hell.

"Ladies and gentlemen, this is your captain speaking," a grainy voice said over the intercom, "We will be beginning our final descent in approximately fifteen minutes. If you need to use the bathrooms, please do so before I switch on the seatbelt sign."

My neighbor hauled himself into the narrow aisle to follow those instructions. I shifted and opened my window to look out over the clouds, his absence an opportunity to let the sun hit my face without forcing his attention away. The clouds extended out into the horizon, fluffy hills and ephemeral valleys. The dark wisps looked heavy with rain, which would probably start falling if it hadn't already. From the research I'd done, Forks seemed like a pretty good place for a coven of vampires. If they'd been here for a while, they probably maintained some kind of presence in the town itself, for resources and easy leads on good prey. The near-constant cloud cover was good for mingling with humans—thanks, diamond skin. If I'd been a betting man, I would have guessed they exsanguinated hikers in the mountains. Missing persons were far less suspicious than dead ones, which would let Volturi-law-abiding vampires maintain a low profile for longer.

Actually, that was a thought. I slid the window shut and pulled a notebook from my pocket. I flipped past a couple pages of notes about airports to an empty spot, then scrawled a reminder to check for missing persons reports.

Mr. Vitiligo returned from his bathroom break and broke his flight-long silence. "You Chinese, kid?" He pointed at the kanji in my notebook.

I feigned surprise and put on my best 'Engrish' accent. "Oh, sorry, this kanji, from Japan."

"Japanese, my mistake," Vitiligo said, waving his hand dismissively. "I can never tell the difference with all your little pictures."

"An easy mistake," I said congenially. "Many kanji are repurposed Chinese character."

He shook his head. "I was just askin' 'cause my grandad served in the Pacific Front, my uncle died at Iwo Jima." He squinted at me, almost accusing.

I felt my mouth twitch downward with unbidden irritation. Never mind that I had been at Iwo Jima—he couldn't know that—and sabotaging my own country. He didn't notice or care, though. Maybe this was why, in my century of life, I had never come to America.

"Any idea what your grandad was doin' around that time?"

I rifled through my prepared lies, discarded the 'Japanese tourist' act and selected another. I dropped the Japanese accent and picked up the Pacific Northwest one I'd practiced for more than a week, just in case.

"Actually, I do. He and his wife were taken down to Puyallup, Camp Harmony." I put some heat I didn't really feel into my voice, then. "They kept him there for five months, then hauled him down to that concentration camp in Minidoka County in Idaho. He was an American citizen, and he was corralled like a beast for the entire war. So yeah, I know where he was. I'm sorry he couldn't help your uncle in Iwo Jima. He wasn't allowed."

A few of the other passengers were peering around their seats to listen to my lies and Vitiligo was squirming under their scrutiny. My father had been slaughtered by vampires over a hundred years ago, but my research indicated Americans really, really didn't like to think or talk about the internment camps from World War Two. My research was correct.

"Okay, okay, yeah I'm sorry," Vitiligo stammered, looking nervously around at everyone else and trying to hush his voice. "I shouldn't've said it that way, I'm sorry, let's let it go?"

"Sure," I said. It was time to de-escalate, make this incident forgettable to everyone who'd overheard. "I probably overreacted there. I'm sorry, too." Just another Japanese-American experiencing a micro-aggression, nothing worth remembering.

I could feel everyone's attention on me. Literally. That's my 'gift.' As if everything else about vampires wasn't enough, we also all get a psychic power. Mine is the ability to reject peoples' attention. I feel it when they look at me, notice or become aware of me, like a little string from my brain to theirs. The firmer the attention, the stronger the string. But I can cut those strings to make them look somewhere else, and I have honed that skill so I can do it before they realize they've seen me. Vampires and humans alike rarely notice they've been manipulated, their minds inventing excuses or simply ignoring it. It's a strange way to be invisible, but there are advantages.

For example,

I took note of everyone paying attention to my little tirade, kept a count of the milliseconds in my head. When I decided they'd had enough gawking, I began cutting their attention one by one. As I did, they shifted back in their seats and I could tell they were already putting the event out of their minds. I didn't even have to touch the final thread, because they turned away on their own, following the herd.

The intercom beeped and the seatbelt lights lit up. Not a second later, we all felt the plane tilt to begin its descent. The humans around me couldn't hear it, but I put my head back and listened to the comforting sound of the tiny cloud droplets bouncing off the hull. It would be nice to walk more freely in the daytime. Nice, and easier to maintain a cover. With Mr. Vitiligo's unwelcome interruption safely behind me, I returned to contemplating my plans, reviewing what I knew.

There was a vampire coven hiding here in Forks, Washington. The weather was probably part of why, as extensive cloud cover would let them interact with their prey a bit more directly, make their hunt into a social game. But I'd never observed a vampire fully integrated into the society they exploited; if they integrated at all, it was into the nightlife where criminal elements thrived. Much easier to find victims that wouldn't be missed or that would be written off as collateral in some illicit conflict. But I didn't expect to find a major night scene here; in places like Forks, integrating vampires often established a reputation of harmless countryside eccentricity. So I'd need to be on the lookout for rumors about 'weirdos' who lived out in the woods and didn't interact much. Hot weirdos, with aloof attitudes, and probably ones who hadn't been in town for more than… six years?

I'd need to put myself somewhere where I could overhear such things naturally. Forks was a small town, and wouldn't have more than a few bars worth haunting. I needed somewhere with a large number of people passing through regularly, a liminal space where my gift would be especially effective. Perhaps I should see if the airport had janitorial positions available? Night shift would be nice, would account for an irregular schedule and justify me being around at night if I ever needed someone to notice me.

"Ladies and gentlemen, we are on final approach to Forks, Washington. It is now two PM, or fourteen-hundred for you military types, and we should be opening up the doors and letting you out of this tin can in less than thirty."

I felt the shaking as we descended more sharply, then the air dragging against the landing gear, then the jolt of contact with the tarmac surface. Taxiing was uneventful, and precisely twenty-seven minutes and fourteen seconds after the announcement, the captain thanked us—"On behalf of Alaska Airlines"—for traveling with them. The stewardesses ushered us down the stairs onto the bit of runway between the plane and the gate to get sprinkled on. The rain intensified as an airport employee handed me my carry-on, and I activated my cloak the moment I left the building.

My 'cloak' is what I call it when I use my gift to reject all attention. Anyone's gaze that so much as passes over me gets redirected onto whatever is nearby, rendering me effectively invisible. You cannot remember what you do not know you saw, and people are remarkably blind outside the direct object of their attention. It isn't useful in tight spaces like an airplane or bus, but it makes me the ghost my targets believe I am in more open spaces.

Until I found a place to keep my equipment and clean my clothes, and until I found an occupation as a cover, I didn't want anyone thinking about me or having recollections of me wandering around their property. For now I had it easy, as the rain and workday hours combined to leave most of Forks' streets empty. I wandered the streets, building the place up in my memory through experience. Sure, I could extrapolate places from a map, but there was no substitute for being in a place if you wanted to know where it was. I would begin in the center and work out from there in a webbed spiral, like a spider weaving my trap. At least Forks would take a tiny fraction of the time it had taken to case Bucharest or Wenzhou.

There were more bars than I'd anticipated, and fewer corner stores. I'd expected the large supermarket, but not the dozen little motels. Did this place really see so many visitors? There was an airport with flights from Seattle, so it made some sense. I watched the high school students from a roof for longer than I'd planned, a strange nostalgia washing over me like the rain overhead. I'd been nineteen for a long time, which obviously meant I was far older than nineteen. But there's still a… certain kinship for people who looked 'my age.' It was them I wanted to protect most of all, to spare the horror of never growing old, of harming all those around you. They deserved to find someone, grow old with them, and eventually return to the earth alongside them.

I ended up spending about twenty-four hours walking Forks. The rain stopped somewhere around four in the morning, and evaporation saw me mostly-dry by noon. The final four-ish hours of my first tour dragged horribly. My body refused to tire but my mind protested the monotony. Only the discipline of training kept me through the final cul-de-sacs and local campgrounds. It wasn't enough to memorize everything, but future tours would do that. I had all the time in the world, and tracking my prey was as simple as waiting for them to get sloppy.

The long day walking did yield a few things to justify a rest, thankfully. I identified a rich douchebag—he made it obvious by yelling at his girlfriend until she cried in public—to pickpocket. Long practice and vampiric speed let me lift his wallet, take the $200 cash, and put it back in the same bump. If that bump was also enough to send him face-first into a massive puddle, and if my attention-shunting gift meant he blamed it on his thuggish friend, then that was just a bonus. My existence hurts those around me, but I could at least target scumbags.

I also located the local no-tell motel, the kind of place where discretion compensated for stained bed linens. I didn't need it for much, just a place to store my notes, changes of clothes, and clipboard. That, and a place to say I was staying if anyone asked. In big places like Bucharest I just squatted in empty storage units and faded into the morass of humanity. But small towns like this basically guaranteed someone would check my story, almost by accident, and it would be annoying to talk my way around that. I set up my compact clothes rack, hung my mostly-dry-but-still-somewhat-damp clothes, then donned a nearly identical set. If I wanted my story to raise no suspicion, I couldn't afford to look like I slept on the street.

Hood up—couldn't have a stray sunbeam peeking through the clouds and revealing me—I left the motel and began walking to my first listening post: Carver Cafe. Based on what I'd seen yesterday and today, it was well-frequented by a pretty useful sort. Hunters, hikers, a couple cops that didn't seem too bad. They were the kind of people you wanted to overhear if you wanted to catch wind of vampires. Prey was nearly always staged to look like a murder or an animal attack, or their disappearance explained away by a hiking accident, so cops, hunters, and hikers were always my best bet.

I deliberately lowered my shield as I walked through town. Today was a day to be seen. I couldn't tell lies about who I was and why I was here unless people had some recollection of me. Careful to keep the hood between my flesh and the sun, I projected the image of an eager Asian tourist. It wasn't too hard, once I got into the act. Rural America was pretty foreign to where I'd spent most of my years, which made me almost normal!

Almost.

Whenever someone particularly friendly extended a greeting, I made sure to ask them something about something they'd consider normal. The English word for 'bar,' what that tree was called, the name of that model of car. Quick, non-committal questions that anyone would be happy to answer. I got stuck in more conversations than I'd expected; the people were almost too friendly! I'd hoped to reach the cafe by 4:30, but I didn't arrive until nearly 5:00.

The place was packed full of exactly the people I'd expected, so I took a seat at the bar and mentally prepared myself. I ordered a single black coffee, which earned me the approving nod of a nearby trucker. I ignored the barista's warning of "Careful, we brew it hot here" and began sipping immediately. The hot liquid ran along my tongue, down my throat, and settled in my stomach. That was as far as my cursed body would let the charade of 'eating' go. I'd have to regurgitate this into a bush or toilet later. But it tasted nice enough. Not as nice as blood, a fact I hated, but the strong flavor provided me a connection to the humanity around me.

For the next half hour, I nursed two coffees and answered the same four questions for anyone who asked. I was Japanese, but my grandfather who recently passed had been an American citizen who moved back to Japan after the war. I wanted to see the places he'd lived and visited. No one pressed too hard for his name because I played the internment camp card. That one usually bought me a few minutes of silence to do the eavesdropping I was here for.

It was a whole lot of nothing. I told myself this was just my first day, reminded myself how statistically unlikely it was to find evidence in the first half-hour, but it was hard not to feel frustrated. My mind kept reliving the satisfaction of my recent kills, now nearly a month gone. Those kills, and the others like them, were the only times my existence meant something. They were my purpose, my sole purpose, to exist with this curse. Everything else was a distraction.

But there was one distraction that rose above the others. As I was preparing to make my excuses and exit, the door jingled and two people entered. A man in uniform and his daughter, both pretty average American specimens. The reason this was so distracting, however, was that I was planning to leave. I didn't touch the attention of anyone I'd spoken to, but I was done conversing and didn't want to get bogged down by another conversation. So when I felt their attention on me, I casually swept them aside.

Except I couldn't.

Imagine, for a moment, that you see one of those gossamer strands of spider silk before your eyes. The kind that you only see as a trick of the light, but which will tickle and irritate your face. You move your hand through them and they cease to be. Such is my relationship with the casual attention of human passers-by. Now imagine that you go to dismiss a thread of silk and your hand crashes into it like a steel pole.

My mind recoiled as it ran up against the unstoppable force of that girl's attention. I felt it strengthen as she noticed that I was foreign, and I tried to break the connection. A shiver ran down my spine as it resisted the full force of my gift, and I instinctively checked over my shoulder. We made eye contact. She said something to her father, nodding in my direction, and I reluctantly allowed him to focus on me.

An irrational unease settled over me. This would not be fun.