Up University Avenue, toward the Legislative Assembly of Ontario and Queen’s Park. Did someone just come out that Starbucks? Were they big and burly? No, don’t look back, just run. Away from the streetlamps, under the trees in the central strip of green on the avenue, adding an extra creak to the bare branches, shoes striking the hard ground ready for winter. Pausing once for three seconds to make sure that the elderberry was secure, still packed into my pocket in its dirt, then zipping onward. Over a bench with a sleeping vagrant, not even waking him. No motorcycle engines roaring, but I was still inside their perimeter.

A statue of John A. MacDonald split University Avenue in two, forcing it around the Assembly and Queen’s Park. I gave the old drunk’s statue a wide berth and a quick salute. Leave me alone, sir, I’ve enough troubles right now.

Did it just nod at me? Damn, my skin was crawling, my eyes trying to jitter around and catch everything, missing what was right in front of me. Hopping a fence just in time. The sense of danger I had picked up from all those animals in the forest was tightening my nerves.

Another Starbucks? I wasn’t that fast, was I? No one came out of this one.

War memorial dead ahead. I zigzagged around it, not making a mock salute this time. Intent matters in your gestures and words.

Now I was in Queen’s Park, a haven of darkness in downtown Toronto. But I should have known that it was already claimed. I should have taken just enough time to realize that my best course of action would have been through the most brightly-lit and crowded parts of the city, not the darker corners where vampires could do their business.

I stopped under the bare branches on a small knoll, twisting my head around, suddenly sure that each step was a mistake. Creaking branches and scraping twigs made a sound like a colony of sleeping bats over a cobblestone path covered in dead leaves.

I had felt hunted at a distance in Quebec, felt one half my body facing the hospital shiver and bump. This was stronger. Much, much stronger, across my whole body. One of the three was very close.

My stupid mind tried to find a story to make this all go away:

When the Highlander met another immortal there was a buzz, so maybe I’ll get some extra clue …

But then full, serious instinct took over:

Shut up, slow down and focus.

As if making a command, I watched everything slow down. And get clearer. I watched the blinking light on a plane in the sky over the city’s light dull orange light pollution hold steady for a long breath. I watched a lonely leaf break off and twirl down to the cold earth. I studied the bark on the trees, the drops of water lingering their, drops that each gave an incredibly tiny reflection of streetlamp light at the same moment as something shiny swung nearby.

Behind you. Silver. Silver knuckles instead of brass.

I blocked the first hit, a blow to the head meant to knock me out. My focus was still giving me isolated perceptions: the first fist just above my left elbow, a muted thud, the second blow with a second pair of silver knuckles coming on the right, the boxer’s rhythm of heavy blows accelerated to a pace beyond the quickness of Bruce Lee. In my mind I struggled to connect the two fists together and see who was punching me, the man who was trying to find the off-button in my jaw or temple.

A vampire? Yes, but not one of the bikers. Clean dark clothing, but not goth wear, not pure black. Passable as one of the more artistic university students. I saw a young face with bushy eyebrows and a beaked nose leering in with wide black eyes, red lips pressed firmly together, a black goatee below the mouth. I saw long curly hair in a huge mane waving backwards, olive skin far from pale, green eyes. He was a large man and his right uppercut was sharp.

Maybe Jewish? Weren’t the Jewish vampires female?

Belie looked Jewish to Bergmann. Stop focusing on the fact that he isn’t a biker and isn’t an obvious Romani and hit him back!

I was almost pressed against a tree by the rain of fast blows, each shot taking another approach to my head, my arms forming a protective box. That uppercut was almost catching me, and then I noticed another thing in my fragmented senses.

My forearms. They didn’t hurt. Not even a little. He was slamming fists lined with silver into them five times a second and it was like getting hit by-

“-a fucking pool noodle!” I roared, and caught his next fist, a straight right jab with elbow locked at max extension, pushing back as hard as I could.

There was a dry, splintery crack. We both froze.

He looked more amazed than hurt, as he saw what I had done to his right arm.

My forceful push had telescoped it. Radius, ulna and humerus were all side by side. The flesh and sleeve around them had whorled like blended paint and torn up to the shoulder, pealing away the cloth and the skin to show a nice pink slab of deltoid that suddenly turned beet-red as the surprised blood welled up. His fist was crumbling inside my own clenching fist, knuckles cracking like popcorn kernels, and there was an arterial spurt of deeper heartblood out of the ruptured wrist.

Then a smaller trickle of the real stuff, the St. Elmo’s fire, came out of the armpit. I was so focused on this I didn’t notice that my attacker was on his knees, still mute and looking amazed. Twin metallic clanking sounds when he sank down told me that he had silver on his knees – I had made my silver-lined suit rolled up in the backpack for exercise, but this was meant for combat.

I came properly to my senses at last, getting everything together into one scene, knowing what came next. There were a few basic rules with handling the undead established in movies, and I also remembered Raven’s words about the eleventh rib, and the exception to the rule.

Well, he doesn’t look Japanese … but it’s still important to double tap.

I looked at his telescoped right arm and the trickle of true blood from the armpit. There’s Hiroshima. I aimed at the left side of his chest for those loose ribs with my fist, and delivered Nagasaki.