The Universe's Mixer

John was restless. The City was having a strange effect on him. The sudden return to a more normal atmosphere, with people who were usually indistinguishable from the type he'd grown up with was bit of a cold shock for the vampire. It reminded him of the first time he'd come home from a difficult tour. Everything around him appeared to be functioning normally, the way it always had been, but suddenly he saw. He saw the fragility, the illusion, the sense that most people walked around with that everything around them was normal, permanent, and peaceful. He saw how blind and ridiculous that notion was.

It was slightly different when you were a vampire, though. Before he'd felt what it was to be the line between the normal life and the horrors and chaos that threatened it. Now, by definition, he was one of those disturbances. Even in a City where the remarkable was accepted with a blink and a double take, he knew he wasn't part of the world most lived in, now.

( Finding the Crow )