The empty nursing home lobby welcomes with the cosy perfection of the North American funeral parlour: reproduction grandfather clock; gleaming cherry end tables; tightly padded wing chairs; the soft evening glow of stiff, pleated lamp shades. An actual funeral bouquet, donated by the well meaning family of a late resident, festoons the imitation hospital reception desk. The home that can never be home.

I brush the snow off the shoulders of my black overcoat and remove my fedora, giving it a shake. While a small, hand written sign announces that boots and rubbers should be removed before entering, no mat or plastic tray seems to exist for them. The receptionist glances up with a frown when I stamp my boots clean on the slush carpet. I’ve disturbed the sterile mausoleum atmosphere. As I pull off my leather gloves, I send her my best charming smile.

"I’m here to visit Mrs. Harker," I report.

"Are you family?" asks the receptionist "She’s not up to a lot of visitors."

"Her daughter sent me a letter asking me to come. I’m an old friend."

"Not too old from the looks of you." She flirts with a tip of her head.

"How old do you wish me to be? Looks can be deceiving." I smile again, sudden deep wrinkles appearing around my eyes and mouth and across my brow.

"Yes," replies the receptionist, not quite sure what has changed. She pushes a register towards me. "Please sign here."

"A record is kept of all visitors?" I ask as I sign.

"Security." She turns the book to her and frowns slightly at my name. "Vlad Tepes? You a Pollack?"

"Do you often insult visitors?"

A flush rises from the milk white skin above her starched collar, up into her winter pale cheeks. It tempts me for a moment. I shake it off. She’s a danger in this free society of advanced medicine and police work.

"Sorry. I forgot," she apologizes. "It’s what we say back home. No offense, really. Just, I love your accent."

"Most women do," I murmur with a slight bow.

Her flush deepens. "Go down the hall straight in front of you, turn left, third door on your right. Her name’s on the door. You do know she’s deaf and almost blind?"

"Yes, I know. Thank you."

I feel her eyes following me as I walk away. Take what you want and leave the rest, I think. A good idea at home, with Ceaucescu ruling. Not such a good idea here. Once burnt, twice shy.

I don’t bother to knock as I enter her private room. She knows I’m here. Dear Mina, sitting waiting for me; a tiny, fragile bird propped up in a hospital bed, pillows framing her soft halo of white hair, a bright coloured afghan decorating her lap. Her face holds great old age, lined and folded with a lifetime of loving and caring. She puts her magnifying glass down on the large print book.

"I felt you, soon as you entered the lobby," Mina smiles. She adjusts her glasses and pats the bed. "Sit down, like old times. Take off your coat. I don’t think my old eyes deceive me when I say you haven’t changed a bit."

"I like to think I’ve mellowed. Not so superstitious. A benefit of the new age," I reply as I hang my coat over the back of a plain wooden chair. I settle on the bed. The room stifles with the heat beloved by the aged. I loosen my tie and pull out the little leather bag of the good earth that I wear around my neck. She reaches out to touch it. I lift the necklace over my head and place the pouch in her hand. I curl her fingers around it. "Much easier than lugging a great coffin across the ocean to Canada. Don’t you think?"

She laughs. The bubbling spring, unchanged from memory.

"And do you still avoid garlic?"

"Only the British avoid garlic. And their health and cooking suffers for it, I’m told. Myself, I miss the zing when I’m away from my beloved home." I grin, showing my fangs a little. She shakes a finger at me.

"Ever the nationalist. You can’t insult me. I’ve been Canadian longer than I was ever British. Though the nurses think I came over yesterday. And wild roses?"

"I thought you’d never ask." Sleight of hand. A single rose appears. I lay it on her lap.

"It’s lovely. Thank you," she smiles. "There’s a vase in the little cupboard beside my bed."

I click open the wooden door in her bedside table and pull out a glass bud vase from among the jumble of another larger vase, a bed pan, towels, magazines, and, I realize with a jolt, a package of disposable adult diapers. I fill the vase in the bathroom, drop in the flower and place the rose on the table. The scent fills the room. I recite,

"The flower too far to reach always seems the sweetest," she says.

"You are the one that got away."

I reach out and stroke her soft papery cheek. She cups her hand around mine, closes her eyes and holds my palm to her face.

"Your hand’s cool, refreshing," she whispers. "I had almost fifty-one years with Jonathan. Hard years when we first fled England and the memories, then good years. I have a great-grandchild, a little girl. Lucy." She looks for my reaction.

"They do not grow old as we grow old, the dead," I murmur through her mind.

"As you grow old." Her mouth purses in a moment of cynicism before she continues. "Jon never forgot to care for me until the end, when he forgot everything. Then I cared for him. But sometimes, in the bad times, or when the stars dusted the sky and blossoms perfumed the night, I took out the paper with the address. It’s been folded so much the creases are tears. Alice could hardly read it. I didn’t know, with all the changes there, if the letter would find its way to you. It’s so important. In my loneliness, when it seems I can’t die, I long for you again."

"I love you, Mina." I pull her frail hand to my lips and kiss the back. "I went away when you asked. I come back when you ask."

"I know." She gazes out the window at the snow drifting through the security light. "Do you get lonely, my dear Vlad?"

"You know I do. Always, it gets me in trouble." I laugh it off.

"Can you take me out to the garden?"

"Now? In the snow?"

"Yes. And let me hear with your vampire ears."

"There’s a little mouse running in your wall," I threaten. "He scratches his head. And there’s flies turning in their winter sleep between your window panes. You’re sure you wish to hear what I hear?"

"Yes. I’ve heard flies before," she chuckles. "And mosquitoes, whining before they bite and suck."

"I sense an insult. You wound me deeply."

"That I doubt. I want to hear the snow, Vlad. And feel it on my face."

"All right. Where’s your coat?" I move to the plain beige closet. "In here?"

"Yes. And you’ll need the wheelchair over there. My legs died with my last stroke."

"How can I push you through the snow?"

"The centre walk should be cleared. I only want to go to the centre of the garden. Where I fed the birds in the fall. Besides, doesn’t legend make you super strong?"

"Your husband shouldn’t have got drunk and talked to theatre managers in pubs. Too many lies."

"Tsk. From the father of lies."

"I’m the bearer of none."

"You no longer have companions?" She jumps to the dark side of my quip.

"No. They’re all dead." I give her a significant look as I wrap her in her coat. "I no longer make vampires. Those I would love can’t cope with the necessary deaths."

"That’s not what I want from you."

"Good."

She tugs on her woolen mittens while I nest her head in a funny brown knitted hat. She grins up at me, a grandmother elf in a stolen tea cosy. I kiss her forehead and gather her, light as a bat’s wing, into my arms. She rests her head on my shoulder. I ease her into the wheelchair and kneel down to slip her boots onto her feet. She brushes the top of my head. Sudden tears sting my eyes. How many long years since that’s happened? I blink them back and smile at her as I tuck the afghan round and into the sides of the chair. I put on my overcoat and wheel her out into the deserted hall.

"I want to hear now," she declares.

I send her the noises of the nursing home. A T.V. blaring in a lounge, attendants chatting, a resident groaning repeatedly for a nurse. Far away, dishes rattle. In the common room, an audience claps at the end of the monthly travelogue. In a strange coincidence, it’s a slide show of a local professor’s travels through Eastern Europe. I focus in on the field mice scuttling behind the richly stained wainscots and she giggles.

"The garden’s to your left," she says.

I guide the chair through heavy glass doors to a snow abandoned patio. Thick white cakes of snow and ice decorate metal tables pining for their summer chairs and umbrellas. I get a momentum going and we arrive at the centre of the garden. A frozen sundial sits in an abandoned rose bed, counting off the hours in case the dying wish to know. I pull the chair up beside a stone bench then sweep the hard seat clean for myself.

"I suppose I don’t have to tell you that you’ll get haemorrhoids, sitting on a cold stone bench," remarks Mina.

"What?" I ask, incredulous. "No one’s ever said that to me before. No, I don’t think I’ll get those if I sit down. There’s some benefits to being undead." We burst into laughter.

"Too long a mother," chuckles Mina.

I settle on the bench and open my mind, giving her my vampire eyes as well as my ears. The moon washes silver through the clouds. Sculptured drifts glimmer into blue gray shadows. Faraway, a car swishes down a slush rutted road. The snow sifts down to perfect silence. Mina tips her face to it. Time passes. Mina speaks.

"I want you to give me a good death," she says. "Here. Where I’ve spent a few happy hours. I’m well over a hundred and the fear grips me that I cannot die. That the little blood I took from you prevents it. I feel like the ancient Greek who asked the gods for eternal life but forgot eternal youth. He ended up bent as a grasshopper, his old voice a cricket’s chirp. I’m deaf, my eyes are going. My legs don’t move, but worse my bladder can’t control itself. I forget so many things I should remember, though the past is bright." She turns her face away from me, her voice as quiet as the snow. "I don’t want to end up like Jonathan. Not knowing my children or grandchildren. Terrified. Not knowing where I am. Finish what you started so long ago, Vlad. Not the changing of me. The giving of death."

"I will."

I gather her into my arms, holding her in a last embrace. She gazes up into my eyes and I feel her settle deep into their plowed brown earth. I push her collar away from her neck and sink my fangs, quickly, before I have time to think of past regrets. Her blood becomes my blood, her life, my life. Only the shell remains.

I place her body back into the chair and walk it back to her room. I put away her coat and mittens, the funny tea cosy hat. The body’s tucked up in bed, the folds of the skin arranged to hide the marks. She looks asleep. I lift one of her fingers and peer into her clenched hand. My pouch of earth rests safe within. I leave it. There’s more in my suitcase back at the hotel. I pick up my fedora and turn off the light. I don’t weep as I leave. She and I are one, even unto the end of time.