The Caddy positively purred down Bay Street.

A 3 a.m. cruise with the rag top down and Toronto's night lights streaming rainbow reflections over its polished green hood, its spotless windshield and shiny mirrors -- oh, this was pure heaven. Well, OK, as close to pure heaven as any vampire was likely to get, anyway.

Nick turned on the radio to the twanging refrain of Elvis singing "Jailhouse Rock." Odd. When had CERK segued to an oldies format?

"Ah, the sweet strains of the fabulous fifties." The Nightcrawler sounded unusually cheery this evening. "Echoes of a bygone decade famous for its sock hops, its rock and roll, and by far its most impressive asset -- its cars."

Cars?

Was that LaCroix, or some changeling Nightcrawler imitator? LaCroix had never cared a whit about automobiles. In fact, Nick clearly recalled that his master's first impression of Nick's beloved Caddy had been less than charitable.

"It's a bit... what should one say?" And he'd circled the huge finned convertible like a fox downwind of a spoiled egg clutch. "Well, it's just a bit ostentatious, wouldn't you say?"

"Who cares?" Nick had replied, and he'd patted the Caddy's trunk with an affectionate hand. "It's got trunk space. Lots of trunk space."

"Indeed. But Nicholas -- the color of the thing."

"What? You've got something against green?"

"Au contraire. It's a color most esthetic to shamrocks, lawns and a number of small amphibians. This, however..."  A shrug. A sneer. And a swift departure in LaCroix's signature gust of stirring wind.

And that had been his master's first -- and last -- expressed opinion of Nick's seafoam green 1962 gas guzzler. To his knowledge, LaCroix had never owned a car. He'd always claimed to despise them, referred to them as "mortal frivolities." Did this rather peculiar radio monologue perhaps signal a long overdue change of attitude?

"Just what is the mystique about a car?" the Nightcrawler's velvetine voice inquired. "Particularly those chrome and leather palaces on wheels manufactured in the nineteen fifties and sixties? Is it, as popular parlance would have it, a 'guy thing?' A boy and his car, as it were? I must admit, I never understood your fascination with that turquoise monstrosity you drive. Until now." Nick's jaw dropped. "You see, I have at long last acquired a vintage conveyance of my very own. And I confess that I have subsequently caught the fever. You really must drop by and allow me to gloat."

Nick, having wrenched the steering wheel twice and squealed the Caddy's tires around two corners (invoking the horn-bleating wrath of several outraged motorists in the process) was already on his way back toward CERK's broadcast studio.

LaCroix with a car? This he had to see.

He arrived in time to hear the Nightcrawler verbally eviscerate -- and hang up on -- a caller opining that old cars contributed to air pollution. The opponent thus dispatched, Nick watched LaCroix switch on a long-play tape before turning to smile at him through the booth's soundproof glass.

"Hello, Nicholas," he mouthed. "How lovely to see you again. Come to admire my new acquisition, have you?"

Nick smiled back and nodded as the overhead speakers burst into "Come on, come on, come on little darlin'," or whatever the title of it was. He'd been rather busy teaching night classes in the fifties, and had paid little attention to the fast-changing fads in popular music. His master had paid even less, or so he'd always thought.

"She's in the alley out back," LaCroix said, emerging from the booth with a look of wonder Nick had only ever seen before on the faces of new mortal fathers. "She really is most exquisite. Come. Let me show you."

"She?" Nick started down the long hall behind his sire.

"Oh, yes. She most definitely exhibits a female personality. And she handles so... well, she practically drives herself. Which is helpful, come to that. I never had occasion to learn, you see."

Nick was still pondering that when LaCroix burst through the door ahead of him and quite literally floated over grease-stained asphalt to alight again beside the car.

The car! Nick gaped.

It was red. Very red. Absolutely screaming red. And he had the oddest feeling he'd seen it somewhere before.

"A thing of unparalleled beauty, is she not?" LaCroix enthused. "She was born in 1958. In Detroit."

Nick had to admit, the elder vampire had outdone himself. The red car shone. It gleamed. It positively glowed. And he knew he'd seen it before. Somewhere. Sometime.

Those huge flying fins (even bigger than the Caddy's). (Could you suffer from fin envy?) The sparkling white hardtop. Spotless whitewalls. And the sporty, checkmark-shaped white stripes on each of its bright red flanks.

"I think we were truly made for each other, this machine and I." LaCroix lovingly stroked the car's shiny hood. "Observe, Nicholas." And incredibly, he pressed his preternaturally strong thumb into the metal until a dent marred the once-perfect surface. Nick started forward as though to protest, but stopped to gape again as the dent LaCroix had made creaked, rippled, and "healed" itself before his very eyes.

"How...?" he stammered.

"It's quite simple, really." LaCroix smiled. "This automobile, mon protege, is one of us!"

As though in answer, the car's round beacon headlights turned themselves on, nearly blinding Nick in their brilliant glare. The radio came on as well, and blasted out the ending lines of "Come on Little Darlin'."

"Nineteen fifty-eight," Nick murmured, squinting at the model name molded to the car's gargantuan chrome grill.

"I'll love you forever," the radio crooned, and to Nick, it seemed as though the car were singing to LaCroix alone. It was, if the look of sheer ecstasy on the elder vampire's face was any indication.

"Plymouth," Nick read the metal logo aloud. Now where-oh-where had he seen that car before?

"...the rest of my days..."

"Fury. 1958 Plymouth Fury. I know that car... I know it..." But from where?

Damn. It must be the cow blood diet. For the unlife of him, he just couldn't remember.

But he could have sworn that between the blazing headlights, that big chrome grill was grinning at him.

"Welcome," LaCroix said, patting the car affectionately, "to the family, my dear."
 
 

--End--